


(Barely) Controlled Chaos

by Liris



Series: I Choose You [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pokemon, Angst, Crossover, F/M, Gen, Humor, POV: Tony Stark, Pokemon - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-21
Updated: 2013-05-15
Packaged: 2017-11-16 18:41:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 32,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/542621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liris/pseuds/Liris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark is rich, handsome and a genius.  He's also paranoid, smart-mouthed and lonely.  His best friends are not human - robots and Pokemon alike - and most of his conversations are held with a disembodied voice that is all-but-omniscient.  By any estimation, he is not normal.  So, when things happen that would drive most people directly into a psychiatrist's office, he's not really fazed.</p><p>He does get mad though.</p><p>***</p><p>MCU/Pokemon crossover, or an attempt to write Tony Stark feels that grew into a whole series.</p><p>Inspired by feriowind's Pokevengers drawings, but using different teams etc.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Persian

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Pokemon and Avengers sketches](https://archiveofourown.org/works/459284) by [feriowind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/feriowind/pseuds/feriowind). 



> Contains descriptions of torture and sexual scenes - nothing too explicit, and nothing worse than shown in the films, but if you don’t like that, this may not be for you. The Iron Man 1 and 2 films will come into this, as will The Avengers, so if you don’t like spoilers, check the warnings at the top of each section before reading. I own nothing.
> 
> So, I went a little mad writing this, and plot! happened, and it's a freaking monster of a story now. But I like it, so I thought I'd share. Hope you like it. Cross-posted on my tumblr - http://charlie-the-killer-plotbunny.tumblr.com/
> 
> Warnings for the prologue: mentions of physical and mental abuse, mentions of alcoholism.

**July 1982 – September 1991, Stark Mansion, New York**

Tony was not allowed Pokémon. His father was very clear on that fact.

His mother had one, an old Persian that she’d helped to raise when she was a teenager. Tony didn’t know if her luminous silver fur was like that because she was close to 40 years old, or if she had been born that way, but it didn’t matter; she was still the most beautiful thing the six-year-old had ever seen. He loved the cat because his mother loved it; sometimes he thought that she favoured the Pokémon over him, but that was alright, because sometimes Tony did too. Tony did bad things, and his father shouted at him; Persian only ever got petted and given treats. His mother was right to like the Good Girl more than the Bad Boy.

Persian was his mother’s constant companion; that was one thing that didn’t change as he grew older. Tony became a prodigy, which made his father behave as if he loved him, at least in front of the cameras. At home, Howard was too busy trying to beat his son’s genius that Tony was mostly treated with indifference and sometimes he was outright ignored. By both his parents. Tony wasn’t a cute little boy any more, and his mother seemed to lose interest in him more and more as he grew towards his teenage years.

He’d overheard his parents argue on more than one occasion, but never about him. They didn’t care enough to argue about their son. No, Persian was usually the topic of their arguments; Howard Stark was of the opinion that the house was no place for pets. Maria always countered that with ‘Pokémon weren’t pets, they were friends’. You couldn’t just pick a Pokémon up and take it home with you; it had to choose to be with you. These arguments were ultimately circular and ended up with both his parents drunk while Tony tried to get close enough to Persian to pet her. The cat didn’t like Tony very much, and he was yet to get in stroking range, but he held out hope. Pokémon have to like you to stay with you; Tony’s parents didn’t like him, but Tony thought that maybe, if he was very nice to Persian, she might like him one day.

Then the Pokémon died, and Tony’s stable-ish family life went to hell.

Without her companion, Maria became depressed, and more than once Tony had returned home from school to find her unconscious in her own vomit. He took care to never mention these incidents to his father, who drank just as much, but handled it better. Or worse, depending on your point of view. Locking himself in his garage or office and passing out on a desk was not Tony’s idea of a good time. By the time Tony turned fifteen, the only member of his family he actually liked was Jarvis, the butler, and he was technically a servant.

All in all, when his school finally got sick of him and let him take his exams early, he was ecstatic for a chance to get out of the house. MIT accepted him (who wouldn’t, with his grades?), he filled out all the paperwork himself – he put himself down for communal living arrangements, just because he knew Howard would hate it and he was feeling petty at the time – and then he was out of there.

He grew to regret his hasty decision.

Not about MIT – that was awesome, even if he did know more about his classes than most of the Professors – but about the dorm living. His accommodation was a small room on a corridor, sharing a communal bathroom and kitchen. At first, he thought it would be fun – sure, it was a step down from what he was used to, but he was paying for it with his trust fund and he knew that Howard wouldn’t shell out for these living arrangements, so he wanted to stretch his budget. He was a few years younger than the other students, but that wouldn’t matter.

Except it did.

His dorm-mates were four other boys – men really, given their age – and they sneered at him when he tried to introduce himself.

“What do they think they’re doing, letting a kid in here?” was the nicest greeting he got. Tony assumed they doubted his right to be there and promptly aced every test put before him, in one case getting a better mark than two of his dorm-mates put together. They didn’t take it well.

As Tony was expecting, Howard threw a fit when he found out where his son was living (it took almost six weeks, and Tony thought that maybe his parents had only just noticed that he was no longer living in the mansion), but as Tony was paying himself there wasn’t much he could do about it. He made vague comments about Tony learning his lesson and coming back for help before slamming the phone down. Tony was almost vibrating with rage; when had his father ever given him anything, except a black eye that one time when he’d gotten very drunk and Tony had said something sarcastic? Howard had apologised when he sobered up – the only ‘sorry’ he’d ever given anyone, Tony thought – and it had never happened again. That didn’t mean that Tony forgave the old bastard. Help, indeed. Everything Tony had, he’d gotten on his own. Sure, the money was Howard’s, but the brains and ambition were Tony’s, and he would _not_ let his father belittle that.

That was when Tony decided that, no matter how bad his dorm-mates were, he was sticking it out. He would not prove his father right.

Thinking back, that was probably where his stupid stubborn streak _really_ kicked in.


	2. Dummy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for chapter: none

**October 1991, Massachusetts Institute of Technology**

Tony closed his eyes, counted to ten mentally then, when that failed to calm him down, picked up his phone and threw it at the wall. It smashed into five different pieces, but he didn’t care. Only his father and Jarvis ever called him on it, and he was going to ignore any calls from Howard Stark from this point on. He thought he could give Tony rules, did he? Fuck him. If Tony wanted to make friends, he’d make fucking friends, and screw his father for suggesting that anyone who would bother was only there because Howard was rich.

He was wrong anyway. Nobody was interested in Tony for his father’s money, because nobody was interested in Tony. He’d been at MIT for two weeks, and nobody had looked at him twice. Which, you know, was fine. He was used to being ignored.

Tony’s temper abated as fast as it had come, and he looked morosely at the pieces of cell phone scattered around his feet. Sighing, he gathered the bits and shoved them into his bag. He’d take it to the robotics lab – the only place on campus where he actually felt like he maybe belonged, even if he was ignored just as thoroughly there as anywhere else – and put it back together. Maybe with a few improvements, because the time it took to charge was just ridiculous and Tony could _totally_ fix that. It would be fiddly work too, which would take his mind off the pained feeling in his chest. He _was_ lonely. Howard had a knack for hitting Tony right where it hurt most.

His father was a dick. He needed to remember this, because Howard was a _dick_ , and Tony couldn’t let that upset him. He was stronger than that. He was more than that.

He slung his bag over his shoulder and headed for the robotics lab before he could wallow any more. It was surprisingly full for the hour; after 8pm, Tony usually found himself alone in the lab. He looked around at the grad students taking up most of the room, then remembered that they had a deadline the next day. Suddenly, it made a lot more sense.

Tony found a free bench in the corner of the room and set the pieces of his cell phone on the table. He hadn’t managed to crack the case – it would take something along the lines of a sledgehammer to manage that – but the back had come loose, and several bits of circuitry had flown free. Tony ignored the shell – he could sort that out later – and focussed on the interior components. He studied it for several minutes before working out what he needed to change, then looked around for the tools he’d need to fix it. They were all on a neighbouring bench, being used by a harassed-looking grad student. Tony debated the wisdom of asking to borrow vs. sneaking them away, and decided that disappearing tools might make the guy explode. He walked over, ensuring that he made a noise because making a person holding a soldering iron jump was a good way to get burned. The student shot him a sideways look, before proceeding to ignore him and continue with his soldering. Tony cleared his throat.

“I need to borrow these.”

Ok, so it wasn’t exactly asking, but it was better than ninja-ing the guy’s tools. It got him a stressed glare.

“Tough. I’m using them. Go play with your cell phone elsewhere, kid; the grown-ups have real work to do.”

Tony bit his lip to stop a very rude retort – the guy still had a soldering iron in his hand – and turned on his heel, sweeping the bits of cell phone back into his bag. He was sick of being called ‘kid’, and he was sick of being ignored and treated like a joke. Tony Stark was a goddamn _prodigy_ , something even his fucking father had never been called, and he knew more about engineering and robotics than every grad student in that stupid lab put together. He could make things they could never _dream_ of.

Fuck it; that was what he was going to do. He would make the bastards take him seriously. He was going to make something that would make their brains implode with its sheer awesomeness. He didn’t know what it was going to be yet, but it was going to be huge. And it would prove to everybody that he was more than his father’s money and a smart mouth.

Maybe it would even prove it to Howard. Tony wanted that more than he would admit.

***

Alright, so, Tony knew what he was going to do. What he was going to build. And it was going to put him on the fucking _map_.

One of his Professors had been talking about coding – Tony couldn’t be more specific than that because he hadn’t been listening, he could write code in his sleep – when it had come to him. He knew what to do to prove himself. He was going to write code. He was going to write code for a _functioning AI_. Oh yeah, this was going to be big.

If he could manage it. It had never been done before. With that in mind, Tony made certain not to tell anybody what he was doing. He didn’t want to face the heckling if he failed. Also, he was a sneaky bastard when he wanted to be, and he really wanted to surprise them all with the finished product, not present them with a prototype that may or may not do what it was supposed to.

Tony started spending a lot of late nights in the robotics lab. None of the grad students cared, so long as he didn’t touch their work, and nobody was interested in what he was doing. That just made it easier.

He started by building the shell – he kept it simple; it was his first time making something that could _think for itself_ , and he figured that the less it had to think about the better. So, one arm, three joints in the support strut so it could bend, a camera so it could sense its surroundings, and a claw so it could pick things up. He gave it wheels to move, made sure that all the joints were working correctly and nothing interfered with anything else, and fiddled with wires to attempt some kind of pressure sensor in the claw (he didn’t want the bot picking things up and smashing them by accident), but with the materials he had available, it would be iffy at best. He would have to improve that later when he could get better tools. For now though, it would do. He would just have to keep the robot away from anything fragile.

The robot itself got him some interest from a couple of the grad students and one professor; it was simple, but kind of elegant, and they were curious about the reasons for the design, but Tony was close-lipped, and they lost interest again just as quickly. Safe once again from potential heckling, Tony turned his attention to the difficult part; writing the code. It was frustrating, and took longer than he had anticipated, and he hit more than a few snags as he thought of things that he should have programmed in and had to keep backtracking, but he was making progress. Even if this didn’t work, he’d gotten further to creating a functioning AI than anybody else on the planet.

God, he hoped this worked.

He’d been working on his robot for a month when he finally finished. He rubbed his eyes, glancing at the clock on the wall (six minutes passed three in the morning), and re-read the final lines of code he’d entered. It all looked right. He’d done it; it was finished. He blinked hard.

He’d done it.

All traces of lethargy left his system, shoved aside by the rush of adrenaline that accompanied the realisation. He scrambled to his feet and read the code again, checking for any errors his sleepy mind might have missed. Seeing none, he fumbled his way over to where the robot was lying dormant under a cloth, and fed a cable from the computer holding the precious data to a port in the bot. Trembling fingers pressed several keys, then hit enter, and a bar appeared on the screen. It was uploading. Tony watched the bar inch across the screen, tapping his fingernails repeatedly against the bot’s arm. It was a nervous tic that he had never been able to shake, not that he’d tried very hard. It annoyed Howard, so sometimes he did it on purpose.

16% complete.

34% complete.

62% complete.

Tony stopped watching the bar and paced the lab, watching the bot from the corner of his eye. He did one lap and returned, physically unable to tear himself away. If this worked, he would have proved himself. He would actually get some respect, instead of the derision that had followed him around thus far.

Maybe he’d even have a friend.

Tony checked the progress bar. 84% complete. He sat back on his stool and rested his head on his arms, counting in his head. 85… 86… 87… 88…

***

Tony yawned as he woke up, stretching his arms out in front of him and arching his back, making the blanket fall to the floor. He hated falling asleep in the lab; it always made him ache all over. He rubbed his eyes and slouched upright, wincing at the pull in his lower back. The computer sat before him, screen black. Tony blinked, then straightened as he remembered why he was in the lab in the first place. He jabbed at the keyboard, waking up the monitor, and the progress bar blinked back at him.

100% complete.

Almost vibrating with anticipation, Tony turned slowly, looking at the spot where he’d left the robot. It was still there, in the same position as the previous night.

The exact same position.

It hadn’t worked.

Tony sighed and his shoulders slumped as he let himself fall back onto the desk. Of course it hadn’t worked, because Tony was a failu…

Tony froze. There was a blanket pooled around the bottom of his stool. There hadn’t been a blanket over him when he fell asleep. Slowly, he looked back up at the bot, which hadn’t moved. He swallowed and reached over to unplug it from the computer. He poked it gingerly.

“Hello?”

There was a second of inactivity, then the bot whirred and lifted its arm, the camera on top focussing in on Tony’s face. It made another sound, higher-pitched and excited sounding, and reached forward, claw grasping Tony’s shirt and pulling his from his stool. Tony followed, laughing hysterically.

“It worked,” he whispered, tracing the arm along to the first joint. The bot stopped leading him around the lab (the same path he’d paced the night before; how much was the bot aware of?) and twitched, making a squealing noise. Tony blinked and prodded the joint again. Again, the noise and twitch, followed by a slight jerk from the claw. Tony felt a grin take over his face.

“Is that… are you _ticklish_?”

The bot whirred and let go of Tony’s shirt, pulling the sensitive joint away from his questing fingers. Tony laughed again.

“Oh my god, it _worked_!”

The bot clicked and circled Tony, banging off a desk and chirruping at it angrily before facing its creator again. Tony laughed harder.

“You’re kind of a dummy, but you’re alive, aren’t you? You can understand me?”

The robot whirred again, shrugging the arm up and down and clicking its claw together. Tony patted the bot carefully. It preened under the attention until Tony began tickling it again, then it reversed into the same table it had just told off. Tony doubled up laughing.

“Ok, so, you’re Dummy. That is now your name.”

Dummy tilted its camera to one side, then seemed to accept that and nudged Tony with its claw. Tony patted it again, staying away from the sensitive joint so it would stay where it was. He grinned and gave in to the urge to hug the metal arm, a feeling of utter happiness washing over him when the bot actually squirmed closer into the contact.

“Dummy,” he muttered, and the bot chirped. It was the best noise Tony had ever heard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note for anyone who's interested: the way Pokemon integrates into this fic does not use Pokeballs, Gyms, Trainers or any of the devices seen in the games etc. The creatures themselves exist, but that is about it. So, if you were wondering about catching pokemon or anything like that, not going to happen.


	3. Rhodey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this part: mentions of bullying, angst

**November 1991, Massachusetts Institute of Technology**

Two months into life at MIT, and Tony was finally settling in. His dorm-mates still pretended he didn’t exist, unless they were busy stealing his stuff because ‘he’s the rich guy’s kid; he can afford it’, but his professors had acclimatised to the idea that their youngest student was more proficient in most of their areas of expertise than they were, and everyone in the robotics lab was in awe of him. He was no longer invisible to everyone, and that was a hell of a step up from his home life; he was almost sociable, and that was not a word that anyone had ever attributed to him. Tony didn’t do social well.

Maybe that was why he still didn’t have any friends. Tony was used to being ignored by humans, but now he was out of his father’s house, he had planned on breaking Howard’s principal rule and finding a Pokémon to keep him company. All of his dorm-mates had Pokémon, and several people in his classes had their Pokémon escort them. One of the professors had a Teddiursa who sat on the desk at the front of the lecture hall and made the least threatening growling noises Tony had ever heard at anybody who walked in late. Tony was certain that several of the girls were late on purpose, just so they could coo at the little bear.

So, yeah, it was fair to say that Tony had anticipated finding a Pokémon that could stand his company. From what he could tell, the creatures tended not to care what a person’s IQ was, or how old they were; if they liked you, they stayed with you, and Tony wanted that.

There were several wild Pokémon around campus as well as the ones following various students and lecturers around; mostly they were bird-types, but the odd Rattata could be found in dark corners and sometimes Sentret wandered onto the grounds. Tony had hoped that, maybe, one of them would take a shine to him, and he made a habit of sitting on a bench in an area where a lot of the Pokémon congregated, throwing crumbs to the birds so that they would hop close to him. They took the food, but none ever seemed interested in the person feeding them.

Maybe Howard was right, and he’d have to buy his friends. He should just give up and go buy a dog.

One more day. He’d try for one more day. The pet store would still be there in the morning.

***

Tony was – once again – sitting alone on one of the benches scattered around campus, eating the remains of last night’s pizza for lunch and throwing crumbs at the birds that gathered around him. Two of his dorm-mates walked passed without looking at him, let alone offering to join him. He sighed and threw the crust onto the ground, where two Pidgey started fighting over it. One more day. It had become a mantra by now. One more day. One more…

“You shouldn’t encourage them.”

Tony jerked and turned to see who had spoken; behind him stood a tall black student that he remembered seeing around campus. Seeing that he wasn’t about to be punched (it hadn’t happened yet, but he thought it probably would at some point), Tony shrugged and turned back to the birds.

“Not doing any harm.”

The student was silent for a minute, then the bench to Tony’s left creaked and he was sitting there, holding out a hand. “James Rhodes.”

Tony blinked and took the hand slowly, waiting for the punch line. He was the youngest, smartest person at this university, and that meant apparently that nobody talked to him. Well, no one except the grad students in the robotics lab, who were constantly asking for his advice, and that was a recent development. It wasn’t until they’d seen Dummy that any of them took him the slightest bit seriously. That, at least, had gone according to plan.

So, this? Unprecedented. Tony’s mind flicked back to his last conversation with Howard, and he flinched. This Rhodes character wanted something.

“What do you want?” he asked, because he was sick of people in general and had no patience for any more games at his expense. Rhodes blinked and let go of Tony’s hand.

“…To talk to you?” he said, uncertainly. Tony snorted and tore the corner off his pizza, throwing it and watching as a Taillow caught it in mid-air.

“So talk.”

There was a beat of silence, then Rhodes spoke again, judgement in his tone. “You’re not very friendly.”

“Neither is anyone else,” Tony said, brutally honest as he watched the blue Pokémon dive and twist in the air, waiting for more food. “Get used to it.”  
Rhodes sighed and reached into a bag at his feet, pulling a sandwich out of it and peeling off the crusts. He threw them to the Taillow, who caught them and took off into a nearby tree to eat them. Tony sighed and threw the last of his food to the bickering Pidgey.

“I’m Tony. Stark.”

Rhodes smiled at him.

***

Every day for the next week, Rhodes joined him on the bench and they threw their lunches to the birds. The Taillow came back day after day, getting brave enough to sit on the bench and wait for them, even sitting on Tony’s shoulder and taking food from his hand. Tony grinned at that, and Rhodes grinned back at him, and maybe he had a friend now. They talked to each other like friends; Tony a little more reserved to begin with, because he still wasn’t sure that this wasn’t some kind of trick, but Rhodes joked and complained with him, and he didn’t seem to care that Tony was Tony Stark, son of a billionaire weapons developer. By the end of the week, Tony had called him ‘Rhodey’, which had made the older boy pull a face and complain, so naturally that became his new name. Rhodey called him ‘Tones’ in response, which Tony hated but also kind of loved at the same time, because even his father had never given him a nickname beyond ‘Tony’, and that wasn’t a nickname, that was because ‘Anthony’ took too long to say.

So, yeah, Tony had a friend. Two, if he counted Taillow, which he was starting to. (One more day…)

The following week, Tony was sitting on their bench, hand-feeding Taillow crumbs of a cake that Jarvis had made and had delivered to him, when Rhodey came up to him with a penguin Pokémon in tow. It was just tall enough to rest against Rhodey’s thigh, two ridges running along its head resting either side of his leg. Tony smiled at them both and waved at the Pokémon, which regarded him coolly. Rhodey rested a hand on its head.

“Tones, this is Pippi. He’s a Prinplup; we grew up together. Pippi, this is Tony.”

Pippi gave a low chirp and leaned closer to Rhodey. The Taillow on Tony’s shoulder chirped back and hopped onto the bench to inspect the newcomer. Rhodey managed to manoeuvre so that he could sit down, and grinned at Tony.

“He doesn’t usually come out the dorm; he doesn’t like people much, but the weather is starting to get colder and there’s a chance it might rain later, so he agreed to come meet you.”

Tony blinked. Those two weather conditions were usually considered bad things by most people, but he supposed that from a penguin’s point of view, it was just what he’d want. He shrugged and nodded.

“Hi, Pippi.”

Pippi ignored him; he was eye-to-eye with Taillow and Tony wasn’t sure what to make of the situation. Rhodey didn’t seem too worried by it, so he relaxed and offered some of his sandwich to the penguin. Taillow stole it, then hopped onto the other Pokémon’s head and ate it, chirping. Rhodey laughed.

“Made a friend, Pip?”

Pippi flapped his wings and took the fish Rhodey offered him. “Do you have any Pokémon?” he asked Tony casually, pulling his own lunch from his bag. Tony felt his mood drop and shrugged, eyeing Taillow surreptitiously.

“My mother had a Persian, but it died a few years ago.” That seemed a safe thing to say, and it didn’t invite a whole host of questions either. Tony didn’t feel like explaining the aversion that all living things seemed to have to him, Rhodey excepted.

“I’m sorry,” Rhodey said, sounding it, and patted Pippi on the beak. Taillow jumped onto Rhodey’s hand and flapped its wings. He smiled at it and scratched the top of its head with the pad of his index finger. “But hey, maybe something’ll come along.”

Tony nodded and changed the topic; he couldn’t tell you what they’d spent the rest of their time discussing, because he was too busy trying not to look at the way Taillow was flitting between Rhodey and Pippi, and when they stood up as Rhodey’s next class started, the way Taillow went with them, riding on the Prinplup’s head. Tony smiled, because its wasn’t Rhodey’s fault that Pokémon didn’t like him, so he wished his friend a good day, then as soon as they were out of sight the blew off the rest of his classes, locked himself in the robotics lab and made unnecessary repairs to Dummy’s arm, stroking the bot and feeling sorry for himself. The robot flexed its claw and tilted its camera to one side, then whirred and bent over Tony in what it probably intended as a hug. Tony closed his eyes patted it.

“At least I’ve got you, Dummy,” he whispered. The bot whistled and hugged him tighter.

***

He was on his way back to his dorm when he heard it. It was dark, cold and raining, and Tony was clad in a pair of jeans that were more hole than denim and a too-thin t-shirt that bore the evidence of his late night working in the robotics lab. He was frankly surprised that he could hear anything over the sound of his own teeth chattering, but he was sure he had. He paused his stride and listened carefully. Yes, there it was again; a high-pitched, almost inaudible yip.

Tony turned in the direction he thought the sound was coming from; there was an alley to his right that seemed to be the source. It wasn’t wide enough to be a walkthrough for the general populous – it was a three-foot-wide gap between two university buildings rather than an actual pathway – but Tony had used it before to get from one class to another when he was running late and could actually be bothered to go. He squinted down it, but it was too dark to see if there was anybody there or not.

“Hello?” he called, just in case. The only reply was another, slightly louder yip. Tony narrowed his eyes, debating the wisdom of checking it out. Well, it wasn’t like he could get any wetter, and this was a very elaborate set-up for one of his dorm-mates’ let’s-mess-with-the-kid pranks; usually they just tripped him up and stole his stuff. Decided, he shuffled closer to the alley and peered down it, calling out again.

The yip this time came from below him. He looked down, and saw a huge pair of brown eyes looking up at him from a sodden, skinny Pokémon. Tony knelt slowly so as not to startle the creature and gently reached toward it.

“Hey there, are you ok?” he asked soothingly, ignoring the shirt sticking to his back. The animal shivered violently and sneezed, crawling closer until its nose touched Tony’s knee. He rested his hand on its back, hoping it wasn’t about to turn around and bite him. It shivered under his palm, cold and soaked to the skin, but didn’t move otherwise. Tony could feel its ribs bumping against his fingertips. He sighed and pulled his shirt off, shivering as the night air made intimate acquaintance with his bare skin, and carefully tucked it around the Pokémon, picking it up and tucking the material under its paws.

“It’s alright, let’s get you dry, shall we?” he said to it, pulling it into his body and hoping that any warmth left in him might transfer to the creature. He finished his jog back to his dorm, doing his best not to jostle the Pokémon, and for once didn’t run into any of his jackass dorm-mates. He put the Pokémon down on his bed, ignoring the damp patch that spread over his sheets, and found a dry towel in the bottom of his closet. Gently, he unwrapped the animal and dried it off, telling it what he was doing so it didn’t startle. After it was no longer dripping, Tony ran the towel over his own hair and chest before throwing it onto the floor. The Pokémon sneezed again and climbed onto his lap, huddling against his stomach in a little ball. He petted it carefully, making soothing sounds until it stopped shivering.

It blinked up at him with huge brown eyes, and Tony realised what it was. “Lillipup,” he said aloud, and the little dog yipped at him and wagged its skinny tail a few times. Tony smiled down at it.

“You’ll be alright now; it’s safe here. I’ll go find some food and you can sleep here, if you want?”

It yipped again and rolled off his knees, so Tony got up and traipsed into the communal kitchen. He didn’t keep food in there, but the others did, and unless he wanted to try to feed day-old pizza to the ill puppy, he needed to raid the fridge. He pulled it open and found a plate with the remains of somebody’s chicken dinner on it. He grinned and stole a handful of the meat before slipping back to his room.

The Lillipup ate from his hand happily, and all the chicken was gone in seconds. The dog still looked starved, but at least it was dry and warm now. Tony spared a minute to change out of his sodden jeans into something more comfortable to sleep in, then pulled off the wet top bed sheet and slid under the remaining layers. He patted the pillow beside his head gently, and the Pokémon wobbled its way up, curling up beside him. He arranged the sheets so that the creature was at least partly covered, hoping that he’d done enough for it. He wasn’t sure what else he could do; it needed food and sleep, but he wasn’t a physician and couldn’t tell more than that.

Not that it really mattered, because the dog would be gone in the morning. Pokémon never stayed with Tony for too long, so there was no point getting too attached to this little one now. He leaned over and cracked the window open just enough so the Lillipup could crawl through when it woke, then curled up and closed his eyes.

When he woke, Lillipup was curled up against his chest, awake and looking at Tony. It yipped when it saw his eyes were open and stood up, licking him on the nose. Tony blinked at it. “You’re still here…”

The dog rolled its eyes at him and yipped again, wobbling down the bed so that he could sit up. He did so, staring. It wagged its tail and licked his hand, eyes never leaving Tony’s face. Slowly, a smile spread across his face.

“You’re still here.” It was a statement this time. The dog wagged its tail faster. With a grin, Tony got out of bed and dressed, then stole some more chicken for Lillipup. At the first chance he got, he’d take it to a nurse, but until then he let himself pat it and reassure himself that it was really there.

It had chosen to stay with him. Today was officially the best goddamned day of his life.


	4. Ditto

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in posting; work happened.
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: drunkeness, drink-driving, canon character deaths, bad descriptions of weaponry.

**February 1991, Massachusetts Institute of Technology**

Tony had been at MIT for four months before he was invited to one of the infamous college parties he’d heard so much about. It was Rhodey who invited him, and it was Rhodey who held him up at the end of the night after he’d had too much to drink and couldn’t make his legs move the way he wanted them to. Sure, he was underage, but so was everyone else, and he’d wanted to see just what his parents found in the bottom of the bottle. It turned out that he enjoyed the buzz, and he’d drunk more than he thought, leading to his first (and still only, really) friend half-carrying him back to his dorm and propping him against the wall while he opened the door. Lillipup was sat on the end of Tony’s bed, a disapproving glare levelled towards both boys, but Tony had merely patted him happily on top of the head (the nurse he’d finally taken the puppy to had confirmed that he was male as she gave Tony some antibiotics for the too-skinny Pokémon) and collapsed face-down into his pillow. He woke the next morning to a disgruntled dog, and when bacon rashers weren’t enough to buy his way back into Lillipup’s good books, he asked the Pokémon if he wanted to go to the lab with him. Technically, untrained Pokémon weren’t meant to be in the robotics lab (neither were untrained people), but as most of the grad students thought Tony could do no wrong, at least so far as engineering and computer programming went, he figured he’d get away with it. Also, Lillipup was very cute; that could only help.

So, Tony and Lillipup both skipped Tony’s classes (again) and headed for the robotics lab, where the bright lights made his head hurt until one of the older students took pity on him and gave him a list of hangover cures and a glass of water. Tony thanked her sincerely, grateful when his headache eased.

When police appeared in the lab three hours later, everyone assumed they were there about the party. They asked to speak to Tony in private, which only cemented the belief.

They weren’t there about the party.

***

Three days later, Tony was stood in a cemetery, watching as dirt covered his parents’ coffins. His long coat, intended as protection from the February chills, lay open against his chest, flapping in the light breeze. Lillipup sat silent at his feet, resting his head against Tony’s ankle in support. Everyone else had left half an hour ago, but Tony couldn’t move; he hadn’t cried at all over their deaths, hadn’t really felt anything except numb. There was no love lost between him and his father, and his mother was less maternal than he would have liked, but they were his _parents_ , surely he should feel something? Something other than the blankness that he had been walking around in since the police had taken him to one side and told him that his parents had been killed in a drink-driving incident. They omitted the fact that Howard had been the one driving drunk, but Tony had guessed that much anyway.

There wasn’t much to say after that. Obadiah Stane – his father’s best friend and now Tony’s guardian – had cried as he gave a speech to the assembled gawkers (some, Tony was sure, where only there to see for themselves that Howard really was dead; his father had made a lot of enemies in the business world). Jarvis had stood by Tony’s side through the whole thing, one hand on the young man’s shoulder, squeezing every now and then in a motion meant to reassure, though which of them the gesture was aimed at Tony wasn’t sure. Tony himself hadn’t said anything; he’d barely blinked as the coffins were lowered into the ground and people began to leave, throwing sympathetic glances his direction. Obie had offered to take Tony home, but Jarvis had said that he’d see to the young Stark’s health, and when Tony had shown no preference either way Obie had given in.

Tony spent two more days at the Stark mansion before returning to MIT. He kept Jarvis in his employ, more because he couldn’t bear to let the man go than because he wanted to keep the house tidy – he couldn’t care less what state his parents’ home was in. Jarvis was family, even if he was paid to stay that way.

The following year, Jarvis was diagnosed with cancer and died barely a month later. Tony spent three hours sobbing into Lillipup’s fur.

***

**March 1991, Massachusetts Institute of Technology**

After becoming the most famous orphan currently living in America, Tony threw himself into life at MIT. He still skipped most of his classes, but he aced every test put in front of him, so the lecturers found it difficult to reprimand him. Instead of class, he spent most of his time in the robotics lab, fiddling with Dummy’s claw until the bot could pick up an egg without cracking it. Lillipup never left his side, and more often than not Rhodey could also be found in the lab, trying to talk Tony into leaving to eat or sleep. Tony rarely listened, relying on coffee to keep him alert enough to function. It took just over a week for Rhodey to have had enough.

Tony jumped and looked up as Rhodey brought his hand down hard on the table, startling him out of his work-trance.

“That’s _enough_ , Tony!” he said, almost screaming. Tony blinked and put down his tools slowly. Rhodey only called him ‘Tony’ when he’d finally managed to exasperate him to the point where normal people stormed off. Rhodey just yelled and pulled Tony after him. “It’s almost two in the morning, and I want to sleep. I also want you to sleep, because I’m pretty sure you haven’t left this room for three days, and this is not _healthy_! You’re going to make yourself ill, Tones.”

Tony sighed. “You can go sleep if you want to, Rhodey. I’m not tired.”

“Bullshit,” Rhodey growled, grabbing the coffee cup out of Tony’s hand. “When was the last time you had anything to eat? Coffee doesn’t count. You’re going to pass out, Tony, and I’m going to have to drag your ass back to bed.”

“You don’t have to do anything,” Tony protested, trying to reach his coffee. He was fine, and he was almost done. He could sleep after he’d finished this. Rhodey stalked across the room and poured the coffee down the sink in the corner. “Hey!”

“I do have to, Tony,” he said, voice low and quiet. “Because you are my friend, and when friends do stupid shit, you help them out. You may be a genius, Tones, but you need me right now, and I am not going to stand here and watch you hurt yourself.”

Tony had no idea how to react to that. The only person who’d ever reacted like that, even a little, was Jarvis, and the old butler was more inclined towards a gentle reprimand aimed at making Tony feel guilty than this. Rhodey sighed and walked forwards, wrapping his fingers gently around Tony’s arm.

“Come on. I’m taking you back to your room.”

Lillipup yipped his approval of this idea, and nudged Tony’s ankles to get him to move. He wasn’t going to win this; Tony let himself be pulled from the room, Lillipup following at his heels. Rhodey didn’t let go of his arm until Tony was back in his room in his dorm. He shut the door behind him and bent to pick Lillipup up and put him on the bed.

“Sleep, Tony.”

Tony rolled his eyes and muttered “yes, mom,” but Rhodey was right, damn him - he was tired. He didn’t bother getting changed out of his clothes – they were rumpled enough at this point that sleeping in them would have no effect whatsoever, and his sheets were grease-stained anyway – and collapsed backwards onto the bed. Lillipup climbed onto his chest and curled up in a ball; as the dog usually slept on the pillow by his head, Tony took this as a ‘stay there’. He glared at Rhodey.

“Now you’re ganging up on me.”

“You’re welcome,” Rhodey intoned, sitting next to him. “Close your eyes.”

Tony rolled his eyes again, but did as he was bid. Lillipup shifted on his chest, so he lifted one arm to curl around the puppy, and Lillipup licked his wrist. He made a vague humming noise – he liked when the puppy did that – and ran his fingers through the fur of his neck, tangling them behind his ears and scratching lightly, getting a sleepy yip. Rhodey chuckled and Tony felt the bed move as he stood up.

“Goodnight, Tony.”

Tony hummed a reply, and the door clicked shut. He rolled his head to one side, felt Lillipup lick him again, and conceded that, ok; maybe it was nice having somebody looking out for him.

He fell asleep feeling happier than he had for a long time.

***

**May 1992, Stark Industries Research and Development plant, New York**

Tony stepped out of the limo Obie had sent to meet him at the airport (why a limo? He wasn’t going anywhere fancy) and stretched, feeling the ache in his lower back ease as he uncurled from the seated position. He’d spent the previous three nights in the lab, much to Rhodey’s disgust, and the two before that he’d spent partying with the robotics grad students. Merry (Meredith McCall, but she had threatened to kick anybody who called her by her full name in a very painful place) had been dropping hints in Tony’s direction for some time, starting with the hangover cures she’d provided once, and had taken advantage of his inebriation that week to plant one on him. Tony genuinely liked Merry, which was why he’d been putting off asking her out, but after her enthusiastic display he’d relented. He didn’t think she only wanted to go out because of his name, but if it turned out she was like the other girls and only wanted him for one night so she could brag to her friends that ‘I-went-out-with-a-millionaire’, then he would have to deal. The robotics lab would be awkward for a while, but eventually one of them would graduate. It wasn’t like they were living together.

Tony shook his head; he had to stop borrowing trouble. Merry wasn’t going to drop him after one night. She hadn’t told him to get lost when he’d had to cancel their cinema trip and get on a plane to New York, after all.

Tony dropped his arms to his sides and looked at the R&D building he’d been brought to. Obie was currently in charge of Stark Industries, because Tony was underage, but he’d decided that the young Stark needed to know what was going on, and it had to be that weekend because Tony’s life was screwed up and fate conspired to make sure that he couldn’t get a date with the girl he actually liked. And Obie wasn’t free any other time, but whatever; it was mostly the other thing.

Obie walked out of the building and smiled at Tony, clapping the teenager on the shoulder in a fatherly manner. Tony let himself sway to the side with the touch, hoping it would dissuade the man from doing it again. Tony’s own father hadn’t been fatherly towards him; he didn’t need it from the man currently running his company.

“Tony!” Obie said, sounding genuinely happy to see him. “You made it! I half suspected you wouldn’t show up.”

“I’m here,” Tony sighed, not happy about it. “You sent a driver to my dorm; I didn’t have much choice.”

At least it had proven to Merry that he wasn’t blowing her off. They’d have to find another time to catch that movie.

Obie tutted and threw his arm around Tony’s shoulders, tugging him towards the building. Lillipup, who had been sitting beside Tony’s feet (he had flat-out refused to leave without his Pokémon, and the private plane he’d travelled on hadn’t had a problem with the unexpected passenger. Sometimes, Tony was very glad he was rich), trotted alongside, close enough that Tony had to watch his feet so as not to step on the dog’s paws.

“You could sound happier about it, Tony. This is all going to be yours when you turn 21; you have to know what’s going on. You’ll be running it in a few years.”

“Then I’ll deal with it then. I had to cancel a date for this.”

Obie shot Tony a look that he couldn’t quite read, then his face smoothed out into a smile. “Plenty of time for that later, eh? Lots of women out there; you’re a fine-looking boy, Tony; you’ll have no trouble getting good arm candy. But business, now, that’s what’s important. Come on; Howard never showed you around the R&D department, and it’s the lifeblood of the whole system, Tony! This is where everything comes to life!”

Tony shot a look at Lillipup, who nudged his ankle with his shoulder in a supportive gesture. Tony sighed and let Obie tug him into the building, holding the door open long enough for Lillipup to enter too. Obie shot him a disapproving look.

“Now, Tony, there’s a rule about Pokémon in the SI buildings; you know that, your father implemented it.”

“And I’m ignoring it,” Tony said bluntly, shrugging free of Obie’s arm and scooping his dog up into his arms. Lillipup licked his wrist and glared at Obie. “Lillipup stays with me.”

Lillipup woofed in agreement. Obie looked like he might argue for a moment, then sighed and shook his head.

“You’re stubborn, Tony, just like your old man. Fine, but don’t let it near the weapons; they’re delicate, and we don’t want to damage them, do we?”

Tony was tempted to place Lillipup down in the middle of the department and tell him to run riot, but he held the impulse in check. Obie was not Howard, and had done nothing to deserve that level of blatant disrespect. He still wasn’t leaving Lillipup behind. Obie wouldn’t change the no-Pokémon-in-the-building rule, because the man’s views on Pokémon closely mimicked Howard’s, but as soon as Tony was in charge, he was scrapping it.

He didn’t pay too much attention as Obie showed them around, more interested in the weapons themselves than the area of the building they were currently standing in. It took maybe half an hour for them to reach the testing area, which didn’t really need an introduction as the firing of weapons was pretty loud and obvious, even from outside the sealed room. Lillipup winced at the gunshots and buried his nose in Tony’s elbow; Tony scratched at his ears to calm him down.

“Let’s skip this one; I know how to fire a gun.”

Obie looked between Tony and the Pokémon he was comforting, and grimaced, but led them further down the corridor without comment. Tony sent him a smile in thanks.  
They ended up in the chief engineer’s office, where Obie tried to get Tony interested in the new weapons the man had designed. Tony looked over the blueprints, which the engineer talked about proudly, then put Lillipup down on the man’s desk and pointed at the trigger mechanism on the first schematic.

“That won’t work.”

The man stuttered, his speech drawing to a halt, and Obie raised an eyebrow at Tony.

“What makes you think that?”

“It’s not connected properly. Look.”

The engineer sneered at Tony, but obediently leaned over the blueprint. “You have a bit to learn about actually putting things together, young Stark, because you’re wrong; see here, this is connected to…” the man stopped mid-ramble and blinked. Tony smirked.

“Yes?”

“Err, nothing; it’s a preliminary design; not important…”

Obie looked between the two, then settled his gaze on the engineer. “Is he right?”

The man’s hesitation was answer enough. Tony grinned at him, smug. Obie’s gaze turned dark.

“Wait here, Tony; I need to have a word with our worker in private.”

The engineer paled, but followed Obie out of his office and shut the door. Left alone, Tony shrugged and looked at the other blueprints, pulled a pencil from a mug on the desk and made annotations to improve the designs, feeling smug. He ignored the raised voices from the corridor, but looked up from a rather rude comment on the third schematic when Lillipup let out a low bark. The Pokémon had jumped from the desk onto the floor, and was peering underneath the furniture, hindquarters up in the air and back arched so his chin rested on the floor. He yipped again, and Tony let the pencil fall onto the desk.

“What is it, buddy?”

Lillipup looked up, then pawed at the space under the desk and whined. Tony knelt down and looked under the desk, wondering what the Pokémon had seen. He often found spiders, but he didn’t draw them to Tony’s attention, so it couldn’t be that, but the gap was too narrow to be anything much bigger.

Tony squinted into the dim gap, spotting an obstruction under there, but not able to make out what it was. He looked back at Lillipup. “What is it?”

Lillipup barked again, and the thing under the desk moved. Tony jumped and flinched back as Obie opened the office door. The man frowned when he saw Tony on the floor.

“You alright, Tony?”

Tony nodded. “Fine. Lillipup saw something.”

“Something?”

Tony shrugged, then froze when the thing under the desk emerged. It was pink and gooey, and it had eyes and a mouth, which made it either a Pokémon that had sneaked into the building or some kind of experiment that had gained sentience, and if it was the latter Tony was getting out of there right now. Behind him, Obie sighed.

“Ditto. They sneak in sometimes; it’s warm in here. I’ll get rid of it.”

So, it was a Pokémon. Tony immediately felt better about it being all but on his lap. Obie stepped forward, and the Pokémon actually did slither onto Tony’s knees, making Lillipup growl quite threateningly at it. Ditto froze for a moment, then went solid and changed shape and colour. Tony kept very still, not sure what was going on, and then there was a Lillipup sat on his lap where the Ditto had been, and suddenly its name made sense. The real Lillipup barked, tilting his head to one side. Ditto copied him. Tony found himself grinning at the display.

Obie leaned down to pick the Ditto up, muttering something about ‘finding a way to keep the things out of the damned building’, but Tony leaned forward and shielded the Pokémon from his reach.

“No, it’s ok. I’ll take care of it.”

Ditto curled into Tony’s stomach, and stuck its tongue out at Obie. Tony snickered, making Ditto lick his chin, and Lillipup growled again. Tony scratched him behind the ear.  
The chief engineer was standing outside his office, looking nervous. Tony moved the Ditto so he was cradling it in his arms and stood up, gesturing at the blueprints with a nod. “I corrected your drawings.”

The engineer looked like he wanted to cry, but settled for nodding and muttering a ‘thank you’ that Tony ignored. Obie rolled his eyes and stepped aside so Tony could get out of the room, Lillipup following and glaring at everyone. Obie growled another threat at the engineer and guided Tony and the Pokémon towards the exit of the building. As soon as they got outside, Obie gestured at the Ditto still in Tony’s arms.

“Get rid of that thing.”

Ditto stuck its tongue out at him again, turning back into its original jelly-form and crawling up Tony’s chest to sit on his shoulder, resting against his neck. Tony patted it gently, and it made a happy-sounding noise in his ear. He smiled.

“I like it.”

Lillipup barked, and Tony chuckled and bent down, catching the puppy as it jumped into his arms. “I like you too.”

Lillipup licked his nose, then sniffed at Ditto under his chin. There was no angry squealing or barking, and a few seconds later the dog settled quite happily into his hold, so Tony guessed they were sorting out a hierarchy or something. Obie’s eyes rolled heavenward.

“What am I going to do with you, Tony?” he asked, and Tony didn’t think he was just talking about the Ditto. He tried not to be hurt by the comment, shrugging the shoulder that didn’t have a passenger and giving his standard flippant response.

“Let me go on my date?”

Obie paused for a second, then sighed and turned his back.

“The driver will take you back to the airport, but I want you in regular contact, you hear me Tony? This is your company, whether you want it or not, and you have to be involved.”  
Tony nodded, paying very little attention, and climbed into the limo that was still waiting for him. Ditto and Lillipup both settled in his lap, looking quite content to be there, and Tony felt a smile stretch his face as he carefully poked the pink blob on his knee. It twitched and then poked him back. He laughed.

Ok, so maybe this was worth missing his date.


	5. Pepper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long, work happened and then I was away for a while. I hope this is worth the wait.
> 
> Warnings for this part: general insanity, self-inflicted sleep deprivation, time-jumps
> 
> Editing this was a nightmare.

**March 1996, Stark Mansion, New York**

Tony looked at the certificate in his hands. PhD. Only 19 years old, and had a PhD. He was Dr Tony Stark.

Too bad that he was the only one who cared.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Rhodey, who had graduated two years before with a masters degree, had come to his graduation ceremony, and been appropriately worshipful of his achievement (he’d made a lot of jokes about the odd cap Tony was required to wear, and had called him ‘Oh Wise One’ the whole day), and his Pokémon were both very proud of him, he knew that, but it would have been nice if maybe Obie could have been there. He was the closest thing Tony had to a family, after all, but the man was busy with the company.

The company had become Obie’s life the last few years, and he’d tried to make it Tony’s too. Tony knew more about Stark Industries now than he really wanted to; he knew enough to be sure that he didn’t particularly want to run it in two years’ time. Unfortunately, he didn’t have much choice. On his twenty-first birthday, Tony inherited Stark Industries, and all the problems and paperwork it containted. He’d met the board of directors twice now, and he thought they were all pricks. He didn’t want to have monthly meetings with them. He didn’t want to talk to them at all.

Tony sighed and shook his head, returning his gaze to the framed certificate in his hands. What was he supposed to do with it now? He had certificates from his other degrees – he hadn’t jumped directly into the PhD, MIT wouldn’t let him, so he’d picked up three BSc’s and two Master’s degrees earlier, two of them almost by accident – and they were in frames on a dresser in the dining room of his parent’s Manhattan mansion. Jarvis had cleared the surface specially for them before he died, and Tony had set them up mostly because he knew that the butler would have been proud of him, would have fussed over the papers and kept the frames dust-free, and not just because he was paid to do it. Tony’s parents probably wouldn’t have cared. He set the PhD certificate down in its place in line, straightening it so it was at the same angle as the others. Jarvis would be proud.

But Jarvis wasn’t here.

Tony had finished MIT now, and he was living back in the mansion for the first time since he was fifteen years old. He hated it. This wasn’t his home; this was a place where he once lived, and it was haunted by memories of his father, making Tony feel like he was seven years old once more and trying to explain how he’d managed to set the silk curtains in the living room on fire.

He couldn’t live here. It would drive him insane.

Ditto crawled down from Tony’s shoulder and sat on the dresser admiring the certificates. Herdier (Lillipup had evolved about a year ago, scaring Tony when he woke up one morning to find his puppy had doubled in size and was now considerably heavier) sat by his feet, leaning against his leg and eyeing Ditto carefully. The dog had become Tony’s unofficial watcher over the years, and Ditto’s too, because the pink blob had a curious streak a mile wide and little to no sense of self-preservation. It was also one heck of a prankster which, while entertaining and yeah, Tony encouraged it, did have a tendency to get them both into trouble. Herdier was probably the only reason Tony hadn’t been arrested yet.

This wasn’t their home any more than it was his.

Tony closed his eyes and turned his back on the dresser. The certificates could stay there; he didn’t know what else to do with them, and he wasn’t about to hang them on the wall so he could see them every day and be reminded how little people cared about his achievements. His degrees didn’t matter to anybody except him, because he was Tony fucking Stark, and he was going to be CEO of Stark Industries no matter what he did. What Tony wanted didn’t matter.

Well, Tony wanted out of this house, and at the very least, he was going to make that happen. This was not the only property he owned; there was an entire island somewhere in the South Pacific he thought, though he’d never been there, and he knew Howard had brought houses in England and France. Tony had spent a fair amount of time in the European houses when he was younger, and he recalled being happy in them, the English one especially, though that was because he’d met Jarvis’s family the one time and the butler’s niece had called him adorable and shown him how to play card games. They weren’t viable options for escape now though, because Obie was expecting him to have an even greater hand in the business now that he was done with college, and Europe was one hell of a commute. There was a place in Malibu though, right on the beachfront; it had been bought as a holiday home for when France was too far away, and though Tony had been there a couple of times, he didn’t have any strong memories of his family there. It was a clean place; he could set up shop there quite happily, and New York was only a (relatively) short journey if he needed to get to the main SI buildings for any reason. That could work.

With a small smile, Tony turned back around and looked down at his Pokémon.

“How do you fancy moving to California?”

***

**April 1996, Clifftop House, Malibu**

Malibu was awesome. There was no other word for it.

The sun was shining, there was a private beach literally on his doorstep, and Tony had the pleasure of witnessing Ditto turn itself into a clump of seaweed the first time it ventured into the ocean and got startled by a passing fish. He had to grab the Pokémon before it floated off and got lost, but the chagrin on its pink blobby face when it transformed back was enough to have Tony almost doubled over laughing. The Pokémon had maintained a respectful distance between itself and the sea ever since, and Tony had taken to threatening it with dried seaweed when it took its jokes a step too far, which led to the blob adopting a haughty pose that was frankly hilarious. Herdier put up with this with little more than an eye-roll, letting the raucous duo have their fun.

Unlike Ditto, Herdier loved the sea, and Tony had taken to joining his dog for a swim every day for half an hour or so in the morning. The water was freezing cold, but it woke him up, especially if he hadn’t been to sleep the night before and was in need of more stimulation than caffeine alone could provide. That happened more often than either of his Pokémon was happy with, and when Ditto started giving Tony disapproving looks, he knew he was pushing it too far; the blob spent most of its time enabling his insomnia.

It was part of his deal with Obie. Tony could have his free reign and live on the other side of the country, but he had to pull his weight with the company – specifically, with R&D, since that was the only department he’d shown any real enthusiasm towards in all of Obie’s prodding about Stark Industries. Tony heard ‘go live in Malibu’ and fled before his mentor could change his mind.

He had spent three days moving his parents crap out of the house – there were a few sets of clothing and one framed picture of his mother and father on their wedding day, which he had put carefully out of the way in the bedroom he’d nominated his so that Ditto wouldn’t break it in one of his fits of exuberance. He spent the rest of the month redecorating; he knocked down three walls, turning the upstairs into three huge rooms and opening the ground floor up to let all of that glorious California sun into every nook the window-wall could illuminate. Which, by the time he was finished with it, was most of the floor. He made sure not to get rid of anything structurally important – he was an engineer, and by no estimation an idiot – and then he turned his attention to the basement. His father had made it into a garage, but as much as Tony loved cars, he had no plans to keep it that way. Well, maybe some of it. The far wall, perhaps, by the ramp that connected the basement to the outside world. Yeah, that could be the garage. The rest of the space Tony transformed into an engineer’s heaven.

There were computers – of his own design, a prototype that was not viable for mass production, but that served him quite well – several steel tables with every tool he could conceive of ever needing spread out over them, a large open area for tinkering with bigger projects, a forge; hell, he’d even included a small, secluded firing range for testing the designs he came up with, soundproofed in respect to Herdier’s dislike for guns. He hadn’t used it yet – he was busy learning his new home and was yet to produce the new-and-improved prototypes Obie had asked him to throw together to show off to the R&D guys (there were still 6 days before the deadline he’d been presented with, he had plenty of time). He had, however, christened the workshop by producing another ‘bot.

In this new home, with so much space and so few people filling it, Dummy was at a loss; the bot wasn’t used to so much quiet and had started to glitch, trying to make jobs where there were none. Tony figured that some company would be good for him (Dummy was totally a him, no matter what faces Obie pulled when Tony said so), so had spent the last week building another robot arm. He kept the design similar, tweaking the claw slightly to compensate for the ticklish joint that Tony didn’t have the heart to fix in Dummy, and altering the AI to incorporate the things he’d learned since his first foray into AI technology. It was half-improvement on the old design, and half-prototype for making Dummy more stable – he needed to fix the loop the bot got into when faced with a dilemma he didn’t know how to solve, and making an upgrade was a good way to figure it out.

The arm was finished and the AI installed two days later. Tony was exhausted; he’d been up three nights in a row getting it done, but the bot’s first whirr as it came to life and Dummy’s response – which Tony could only think of as a Happy Dance – was worth it. Ditto also loved the bot, mostly because it became clear two minutes after uploading the code that Tony had miscalculated his adjustments to the claw. The bot wasn’t ticklish, so it had worked in that respect, but no matter how he adjusted the wiring, he could not get the robot to grip anything properly. Dummy didn’t care, and Herdier reacted with a flinch the first time a wrench hit the floor, but ignored it from then on. Ditto, however, delighted in giving it things to hold, just to see how long it took before it dropped them. Tony wondered briefly whether he could put the Pokémon off by draping the new bot with seaweed, then gave up and named it Butterfingers.

They were all a little dysfunctional; why should the newest addition to the family be any different?

***

**August 1997, Stark Industries Main Office, New York**

“Mr Stark?”

Tony looked up at the voice. He was half-heartedly glancing through the third fucking ream of paperwork his good-for-nothing secretary had dumped on his desk ten minutes before, just prior to screaming that nothing was worth putting up with his bullshit and quitting. The woman knew how to make an exit, he’d give her that. Pity she didn’t know anything about filing; the first two piles he’d looked at had been nothing to do with him; they were for Marketing and Accounts respectively. Tony had no idea who’d hired her – he certainly hadn’t, and he was quite glad that she’d gone – but they’d done a shit job. Hell, he _hated_ paperwork with a passion that had once led Ditto to turn itself into a paper shredder, and he had managed to do a better job in the last few minutes; the woman was not getting any kind of recommendation from him.

Not that Tony thought she’d take one if he offered. She had made her opinion of him quite clear before she stormed out of his office. Well, him and Ditto. Mostly Ditto. The blob freaked her out, usually on purpose. That was her problem so far as Tony was concerned, and one of the big reasons he was glad to see the back of her.

As he’d threatened when he was seventeen, the first thing he’d changed when he inherited Stark Industries three months ago was the ‘no Pokémon allowed’ rule. Obie had not been happy, and neither had his neurotic secretary (whose name he had never bothered to learn – she had shrieked the first time she saw Ditto, so he had dubbed her ‘Screamer’ and ignored all her attempts to correct the nickname), but everyone else had loved the change, and the upswing in productivity – after a week or so of the novelty wearing off – had silenced any objections on Obie’s part.

So yes, Screamer was gone, and she had left him with a headache from staying up four nights in a row working on crap that he had very little interest in and the shrill pitch of her voice as she yelled at him, and a pile of paperwork that was taller than he was. Even Herdier had been pissed at her, and that took some doing. The dog put up with Tony and Ditto every day; annoying him to the point where he showed it visibly was a feat and a half.

So Tony was understandably thankful for the interruption/rescue from the ridiculous amount of paper on his desk. He leaned sideways to see around the largest pile, and couldn’t help the smirk that crossed his lips as he saw the owner of the voice. It was a woman of about his own age, certainly no older than his own twenty-one years, and she was very pretty. Her hair was fire-red, swinging down her back to her waist, and framing her slim shape nicely. She was an inch or so taller than him, if he had to guess from his seated position, mostly because her legs were about six miles long and revealed quite nicely from the knee down by a modest skirt that was far too long for his liking. Also, there was a small grey Pokémon peering from behind her knees, which instantly gained her points.

Tony smiled at her, pushing his exhaustion back as he did so. He needed to sleep soon, but he could fake his way through whatever she wanted before collapsing and dealing with this shit when he woke up.

“I am. Who are you?”

“Virginia Potts, sir. From Accounting.”

Tony made a mental note to look her up on the company files later – when he wasn’t close to passing out from lack of sleep, he was going to hit on her until she swooned.

She stepped fully inside the office and eyed the desk with distaste, the Pokémon at her side doing the same thing. It had a white tail that was wrapped about its neck like a fur scarf – it was a very well-groomed, elegant looking thing, like the woman it was with. Tony had no idea what it was, but he was going to find out; it was rare these days for him to see a Pokémon that he didn’t know the species of. Walking forwards, she gingerly placed her own – small, thank god – pile of papers on the tiny clear space remaining on his desk.

“I wanted to talk to you about a problem I found with some of your numbers.”

_That_ woke Tony up. His appreciative leer turned into a scowl as he totally abandoned the prior paperwork (not that he’d been paying it much attention in the first place) to study the file in front of him.

“Impossible. I don’t make mistakes with math.”

“Third page, fifteenth line from the top,” she reeled off. Tony frowned at the pages as he flipped through and found the so-called ‘error’. He read the line, blinked, then read it again. And then a third time. He sighed loudly.

“Fuck.”

“Told you,” Potts said, not sounding as smug as he would have thought – not many people corrected Tony Stark, it was usually the other way around – and he looked up to find her elbow-deep in the papers on his desk, her Pokémon sitting by her side passing her piles and taking ones she filtered out from the much larger selection to her left. He cleared his throat, wondering what she was doing.

“I’m pretty sure at least some of those are private.”

Not that he cared, but the statement made her blush, and yep, he was right, she looked good like that.

“Sorry sir,” she said, sounding embarrassed. “I shouldn’t have touched it.”

“I don’t actually care,” he said, waving one hand carelessly and taking a pen from Herdier with the other to correct his error. “Screamer dumped it all on here and left; I don’t know what most of it is.”

Potts smiled, a tiny quirk of lips on one side. “Most of it isn’t for you.”

He put down the pen, the equation now correct (he needed to stop trying to do accounts when sleep-deprived), and gave her his undivided attention. “It isn’t?”

She shook her head. “No. Those ones need your signature,” she pointed to the small pile her Pokémon was holding, “but these are for Research and those ones are for Marketing. This one should be on my boss’s desk; I’ll take it down with me now. If that’s alright?”

Tony blinked at her. He made very bad decisions when he was craving sleep, he knew this, but the solution to all his problems was staring him in the face and he was not going to turn it down. “No.”

She frowned at him, startled. “No?”

“No. Because they’re no longer your boss.”

Potts blinked at him slowly. “…Are you firing me? Because you said you didn’t care about the paperwork…”

“I don’t.”

“…and I’m certain that you can’t fire people for pointing out your mistakes, that’s what I’m there for…”

“I’m not firing you.”

“…and if you’re going to, then my job is just… you’re not?”

Tony was smiling broadly by now. Her rant had been somewhere between angry and incredulous, with just enough disrespect thrown in there for Tony to decide that he liked this woman. He didn’t like many people – Rhodey and Obie were about the only humans on that list, and wasn’t that just sad – but he liked Virginia Potts. And she was going to need an awesome nickname, because ‘Virginia’? Really? No.

“What does your family call you?”

She blinked, wrong-footed again by the sudden turn in conversation. Beside him, Herdier growled lowly in warning. Tony petted him between the ears, trying to reassure the dog that he wasn’t about to do anything remarkably offensive. Herdier didn’t look like he believed him, but he did stop growling, so that was good.

“Excuse me?” she asked, recovering from the derailment of her thought-train. Tony liked that she got over it quicker than most people managed; Tony ran on about six different tracks simultaneously, and she’d need to be quick to keep up.

“What does your family call you? Surely they don’t all use ‘Virginia’ all the time.”

She frowned at him. He took her silence as permission to guess.

“Ginny? Gin? Gin-Gin? I like the last one.”

“I have never been called Gin-Gin in my life, and I would like to never hear it again.”

Tony grinned widely at her half-offended tone. Oh yeah, she would do.

“Fair enough. What do they call you then?”

There was another hesitation, then she finally answered him. “Pepper.”

Pepper. Tony laughed. It was so appropriate, he was almost mad at himself for not thinking of it. “Brilliant. Pepper, I like it. I like you. So no, Pep, I am not firing you.”

He could see the ‘warning, mad person, back away slowly’ light flashing behind her eyes, but to her eternal credit she did nothing more than straighten her posture and tilt her head to one side.

“Then what are you doing?”

“Promoting you. I need a new secretary, and you are just about perfect and officially a gift from god if you say yes. The wage is outrageous; it’ll keep you in Jimmy Choos for the rest of your life. You have to put up with me 24/7, but that’s why I pay you the big bucks. Interested?”

Herdier slowly banged his head against Tony’s knee in the nearest gesture he could get to a facepalm. Pepper’s Pokémon looked equally sceptical, but Pepper herself was smiling at him, and not in the ‘humour-the-crazy-man’ way either. He had actually managed to amuse her. He was calling that a win.

“Mr Stark?”

“Yes Pepper?”

“Do you always talk so much?”

He laughed. “I never shut up. Ask Herdier.” The dog barked an agreement. Tony nodded sagely. “See.”

She shook her head, smirking. “In that case, I’ll be needing a set of noise-cancelling earplugs. And I want a nice office.”

“You can have mine,” he offered, grinning widely. “But no earplugs. You get paid to put up with the ramble; you’ll just have to deal with it.”

She sighed exaggeratedly, then nodded. “Fine,” she said, attempting to sound hard-done-by, but the smile rang out in her voice. “I guess I can put up with it. For the shoes.”

“Of course. Go tell your ex-boss that you’re moving up in the world; I’ll see you here tomorrow. Wear a shorter skirt.”

“Are you sure ‘up’ is the right direction?” she asked, making him smirk again. She lowered her Pokémon to the ground, placed the files that Tony needed to sign in the middle of his immaculate desk, and picked up the others, hefting them as though they weighed nothing. “Will that be all, Mr Stark?”

“That will be all, Ms Potts,” he replied, happier than he could remember being for a long time. Certainly since he’d had to return to New York – he’d loved Malibu. Stupid Stark Industries making him relocate. He missed the sun.

Pepper nodded and turned to go, pausing briefly beside the door. He raised an eyebrow as she looked back at him over her shoulder.

“I don’t think I want to know the answer, but I’m going to ask anyway. Screamer?”

Tony grinned like a lunatic. “She didn’t get to pick her nickname.”

Pepper shuddered lightly and left. Tony leaned back in his chair and made happy faces at his much-smaller pile of paperwork.

There was no way that this was a bad decision, no matter how sleep-deprived Tony was.


	6. Nidoran

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter is so late, I had flu, and then work decided to give me all the hours I'd missed in one go. Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it.
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: semi-graphic kissing scene, but nothing above a PG-13. Attempted mugging, drunkeness and abuse of sarcasm. Also, I know nothing of negotiating contracts, but it's Tony so he makes it work.

**September 1997, Stark Industries Main office, New York**

Pepper Potts was an angel from heaven, and Tony was having her canonised. She’d rolled her eyes at him when he’d made that declaration, but he’d written it down on a memo with Stark Industries letterheads, therefore it was now official and had to happen. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten that part of Pepper’s job now was sorting all the paperwork.

She had screwed the memo up and tossed it over her shoulder onto her Charmeleon’s lap, who promptly fried it to ashes. Tony was tempted to mime being mortally wounded, but Ruby, the Charmeleon, gave him the evil eye, and he didn’t quite dare risk it. Pepper may be sporting a halo and white feathery wings, but Ruby quite literally had horns and a tail, _breathed fire_ , and apparently hated his guts. Tony knew why she felt like that, but still felt it was unfair; what happened had been Dummy’s fault, not his. And hey, Pepper was talking to him, so why the dragon felt the need to blow smoke at him every time he so much as breathed in Pepper’s direction, he didn’t know. Whatever, Tony wasn’t stupid enough to pick a fight with the Pokémon.

Back to Pepper. Homicidal dragon aside, his new PA was a full-fledged, halo-bearing angel of the lord, and Tony was considering giving up atheism just on the evidence of Pepper alone. She had come into his life literally just as he needed her, she had tidied up his office (she had refused to take it as he’d offered, correctly assuming that he’d take the excuse of no longer possessing it to spend all his time elsewhere, like his workshop) and made the wide passage outside it into her own space – Tony had bought her a pristine oak desk and had the side walled up, so that it was an actual room and not just the end of the corridor. She had refused to wear a shorter skirt, despite his pestering, and fielded his flirting with a flair that told him he was hardly the first person to find her attractive. She also bantered with and insulted him; in short, she was everything he had ever needed wrapped up in one leggy, fire-haired package. Of course, she did have a habit of threatening to send Cindy, the small grey Pokémon he’d first seen her with, into his office when he was working to sort it out.

Cindy was a Cinccino, Tony had discovered, and their entire species was obsessed with cleaning. Pepper was efficient and tidy, but Cindy on her own was a perfectionist to the core and it drove Tony – who often had motor oil in his hair and spread grease to a number of surfaces directly proportional to how many hours he’d spent in his workshop the previous night – round the fucking bend. The Pokémon had tried to clean him he didn’t know how many times, and much as he hated changing for anybody that wasn’t him, he had started to make sure he was at least relatively clean before coming to the office if he thought Cindy was going to be there. Herdier approved ( _traitor_ , Tony had mumbled), and Ditto thought it was hilarious right up until the Cinccino’s attention turned to it, and thereafter could be seen checking the coast was clear before crawling from Tony’s shoulder for the day.

...On second thoughts, why did Tony think Pepper deserved sainthood? Her two Pokémon were psychotic and obsessive-compulsive by turns, and she threatened him with them. Screw the canonising, Pepper was _evil_. It was probably a sign of masochism that Tony kind of liked it.

But, angel or evil or something in-between, Pepper was awesome. Even Rhodey thought so which, given that Rhodey liked _Tony_ , may not be the best indicator of how good his judgement was, and he liked a lot more people than Tony did because he was, you know, something resembling normal, but Tony’s point was that his best friend liked Pepper and actually said that she was _good for Tony_ five minutes after meeting her. Rhodey didn’t think that many things were good for Tony, Herdier and Jarvis being the only other examples he could think of (Rhodey was under the impression that Dummy and Ditto were bad influences on him, or possibly it was the other way around, he wasn’t sure, but either way they weren’t on the list). So, high praise indeed for Pepper.

Their meeting came after Pepper had been with Tony for a month. Rhodey came to the office, and actually got Pepper to smile when telling Tony that he was there. The smile vanished a few minutes later when Tony informed her that he was taking Rhodey to a coffee shop around the corner that he couldn’t believe the older man had never been into, and he had to rectify this _now_. Pepper had scowled , Ruby blew smoke rings in his direction, and then threats were made. Tony had half an hour, or Ruby was coming after him. Rhodey was eyeing Tony with undisguised amusement as he acquiesced and led the way to the street.

“So, your new secretary is something special, huh?”

Tony shot Rhodey a look that carried equal parts disgust and agreement. “She’s a gift from a deity, and a reward for putting up with you for the last six years. And don’t call her a secretary to her face, she really doesn’t like it. She’s a PA.”

Rhodey burst out laughing and clapped Tony on the shoulder as they entered the small coffee shop. “Man, you’re whipped.”

Tony scowled and waved a finger threateningly under Rhodey’s nose, ignoring the amused looks the two baristas were shooting each other behind the counter. “I am not whipped, and if you say that again, I will forbid you from having coffee and you will regret it for the rest of your life, because this place is _heaven_. Isn’t it, Jeanie?”

“Sure is, Mr Stark,” the red-haired girl behind the counter shot back with a wink, pushing a large mug of coffee over the counter towards him. He grabbed it with a grin and took a swig, closing his eyes in pleasure as the taste swirled over his tongue. Rhodey was still smirking at him.

“Come here a lot, Tony?”

“All the time,” Tony said shamelessly, winking at the other girl behind the counter and pushing money towards her. She took it with a more subdued smile and pocketed half the change without asking, putting the other half in a glass on the counter for Jeanie. “These girls make the best coffee I’ve ever tasted, and I swear I’ve never actually placed an order, but Jeanie gets it spot on every time. She’s psychic or something.”

Jeanie and RoRo, the dark-skinned girl who’d taken Tony’s money, exchanged an amused look. Jeanie pushed a mug towards Rhodey, who arched an eyebrow but picked it up and sipped at it. His eyebrows shot up and he looked at the girls with wide eyes.

“Ok, you were right. Why didn’t you bring me here before now, Tones?”

“You were off globetrotting, that’s why. I don’t think they deliver to Outer Mongolia.”

“Ten metre radius,” RoRo confirmed with a cheeky smile. “If you walk off without your coffee further than that, we drink it for you.”

Tony grinned. Rhodey rolled his eyes.

“I didn’t go to Outer Mongolia anyway.”

“Why not?”

Rhodey sighed and sat down at a table in the window, cradling his coffee in his hands. Tony joined him, still grinning. He’d missed Rhodey while he was off travelling the world, even though the older man had called every few days, and Tony had a pile of postcards and small gifts from every country his friend had visited in a box in the penthouse apartment he’d bought upon his return to New York. He refused to live at the mansion, though he had made three more trips to the old house to deposit more degree certificates on the dresser. Most of his stuff was still in Malibu, as he was mid-way through the process of relocating the R&D department to California, possibly along with a few other departments, and it would only be responsible of him to be near his employees, wouldn’t it?

Tony finished his coffee and looked up just in time for another to land at his elbow. RoRo smiled as she swept up his used mug and returned to the counter, talking to Jeanie over it and giving the men their privacy. Tony grinned at them. He loved this place.

“So, now that you’re back where you belong, what are you doing?” he asked, turning back to Rhodey. The older man smiled and shrugged one shoulder.

“That’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about. Some of the things I saw abroad... I’ve signed on.”

Tony blinked at the sudden change in conversation and wondered if Rhodey meant what he thought he meant.

“Signed on? Like, the army? What kind of places did you go to? I don’t remember any war zones on the list.”

“Tony…”

“Have you thought about this, Rhodey? Properly? You have a Masters from MIT; you can do so much other stuff. Hell, you could probably do my job.”

“I don’t want your job. I wouldn’t mind your PA though.”

That was a weak joke, but the look on Rhodey’s face told Tony all he needed to know. His friend had been planning this for a while, and the decision was already made. This was an FYI, not an opinion-seeking mission.

“My Pepper, get your own,” he joked back, getting a smile in return. Rhodey could read Tony just as well as Tony could read him; he knew this was the closest to an endorsement he was going to get. Tony may make weapons, but that was his father’s business, not his. Now though, now it became his business. Now it was personal.

He pulled his cell from his pocket and dialled Pepper, who answered very politely until she realised it was him.

“Mr Stark. No, I will not extend the deadline; you have a meeting with two of the Board in forty minutes and I’m not cancelling it again.”

“That’s not why I’m calling Pep, though you do realise that now you’ve reminded me, I’m going to dawdle on purpose. I hate Board meetings.”

“I’m aware. Herdier is here though; I could just send him in your place. He’d probably talk more sense.”

“Do that,” Tony agreed, smiling slightly at the expression he could imagine her wearing right then. He forged ahead with his original point before she could come up with another, more effective threat, and ignored the odd look on Rhodey’s face as he eavesdropped. “I need you to re-draft the military contracts.”

There was silence on both ends of the line for several seconds, then Rhodey narrowed his eyes and Tony could sense Pepper doing the same thing.

“Tony…” Rhodey said, at the same time Pepper said “Mr Stark…”. Their voices carried the exact same tone of ‘what the hell are you doing’. He cut across them both before they could say more than his name.

“I need a new sub-clause, or however you want to draft it. James Rhodes will be present at any and all liasons between the military and Stark Industries, and they are to deal with me personally. Get Legal on it, whatever, just make it happen. And schedule a meeting with somebody for sometime in the next month; I want to go over the latest deal we made with them. There are a few additions I want to make.”

Pepper was a little thrown by this efficient Tony (he could do it when he wanted to; he was a Stark, after all, and he’d spent the last few years learning from Obie, whether he wanted to or not), but knew better than to argue with it, merely replying in the affirmative and confirming that he would be back in the next quarter of an hour. Tony hung up with his gaze firmly on Rhodey, who was staring at him like he’d never seen him before.

“Tony, what are you doing? You can’t just change the contracts…”

“I can and I am. You’re going into this, fine. I can’t change your mind, and I won’t insult you by trying. But I can give you the best fucking chance of coming home in one piece. You looked after me all through MIT, Rhodey; it’s my turn. What was it you said to me once? ‘When friends do stupid shit, you help them out.’ You’re coming home, Rhodey. I’m not letting you not come home.”

***

Ten minutes later, and Tony was on his way back to the office, alone this time. He’d left Rhodey flirting with the two baristas, happy enough to meet him that evening for a drink or ten and to let Tony pretend, just for one night, that his only real friend in the world wasn’t heading off to fight a war and might not come home. Tony couldn’t let that happen; he couldn’t lose Rhodey. It would break something inside of him, as much as losing Herdier or Ditto would. Rhodey was a piece of him, and Tony would protect him to the best of his ability. If that meant drafting up new military contracts and Tony doing most of R&D’s job for them, then so be it. He had carried the department for the last two years anyway, it wouldn’t be any real change.

God, he wanted a drink.

He stalked into the Stark Industries office building, working out several improvements to the standard body armour provided to the military in his head; it was one of the things he intended to include in the new deal, as SI didn’t currently manufacture it, but they were damn well going to start. It needed to be protective without being bulky, and that was an issue, but if he could make a few small alterations… he was distracted from his planning by a screech from his left, followed by a lot of yelling and a slew of curses that had him mildly impressed. None of them were particularly original, but their sheer number spoke volumes about the shouter’s vocabulary.

Tony veered towards the shouts, as they seemed to be of anger rather than ‘oh Holy God we’re all going to die’, which had happened a couple of times when he’d been in the R&D buildings and led to a few people losing their jobs for sheer idiocy. Tony was not losing staff to an explosion because somebody couldn’t fucking count.

He was right about the shouting; following the voices led him through a few startled workers in the SI cafeteria (Tony made a point to avoid it usually; their coffee was awful and, sad though it may be, that was how he judged these places) to the kitchen. There, a large man with a very red face was practically hopping in rage, shouting obscenities out of the open fire doors into the alleyway beyond. Tony stopped in the doorway, watching how everyone else in the kitchen was staying as far out of range as possible, and surmised that this was probably either really out of character, or the guy was a dick and had everyone cowed. He hoped it was the former, but knowing his luck…

He leaned against the wall and cleared his throat loud enough to draw everyone’s attention. The chef (he had to be, dressed like that) sneered at him, before realising who he was and trying to appear professional.

“Who do… Mr Stark. What are you doing here?”

OK, this was the chef’s domain, Tony got that. He could still do without the ‘get the fuck out of my kitchen’ in the guy’s voice. Tony decided that option number two was the right one; this guy was a dick. He raised an eyebrow and affected a deliberately casual tone of voice.

“Investigating a murder on Stark Industries premises. That is what’s happened here, right? I can’t think why you’d be swearing so loudly otherwise, unless you got a papercut or something. Hey, those mothers _sting_ , I’d yell too. Of course, the whole street probably wouldn’t hear about it, unless I hired a skywriter or something, but you don’t need to, you have like a built-in foghorn or something, really. Cuts right through the crowds.”

The chef’s face was crimson with rage by the time Tony was finished, and everyone else in the room was muffling smiles and sniggers. One boy didn’t bother, snickering openly to Tony’s left. Tony decided that he was awesome and turned to face him.

“So, what _did_ happen, and why do I care?”

The boy sobered quickly and nodded out the open doorway. “There’s a Nidoran that forages…” He was talking fast, as though anticipating being cut off. Tony shot the chef a glare as he opened his mouth to do just that, and was totally unsurprised when it failed to elicit a reaction. He paid no attention to whatever the idiot was shouting at him, merely waited for him to take a breath before throwing in his own input.

“Wow, you really are a dick.”

That stopped the tirade, and got more than a few laughs from the assorted watchers. He turned back to the boy, who was grinning at the sight of the stuttering, speechless chef, and nodded. “You were saying?”

“Right, Nidoran. It’s been around here for about a week, scrounging food. I think it’s hurt; it’s been limping, but it won’t let me get close enough to see. I’ve been leaving food out for it, stuff that would have been thrown away otherwise, you know? Anyway, Gary found it eating from the bins and went nuts.”

Tony nodded and walked calmly past the now-babbling chef to peer out into the alley. For a few seconds, he couldn’t see anything, and he hoped the Pokémon hadn’t run out into the road at the far end while trying to escape, but then he caught the glimmer of eyes hiding underneath a skip. He crouched to look underneath, and a dark shape shuffled backwards as far as it could go. Tony was struck by the similarity to the situations in which he’d found both Ditto and Herdier, and felt his expression fix. Alright, now he was pissed off. He stood up and whirled around, stalking back into the kitchen. He pointed at a random woman standing close to the door into the main building.

“You, go to my office, tell Herdier that I need him down here, now. When Pep… Ms Potts tries to stop you, tell her the same thing.”

His voice was flat and toneless. The woman blanched then ran from the room, presumably to fetch Herdier. Tony turned to face the chef.

“You’re fired.” He was in no mood to sugar-coat anything, and he really didn’t want to be nice to this man. He pointed at the boy who’d spoken to him before. “Can you cook?”

The boy hesitated for a second, pointing at his own chest as if to confirm that Tony was actually talking to him, then swallowed and nodded. “I… yeah. Sure. Why not?”

“Great,” Tony said, hearing ‘yes’ and ignoring the less-than-enthused tone that accompanied it. “You’re hired. Get me a list of whatever you need, I’ll make sure you get it. The good stuff. If you find a way to make the coffee here palatable, I’ll get you the _really_ good stuff.”

The boy nodded, much more enthusiastic now, and Tony turned his glare on the ex-chef, who was still standing in the middle of the kitchen looking thunderstruck. He raised his voice slightly and spoke to the room in general. “Somebody call security; I want this man removed. Now.”

There was movement as he finished talking, but he ignored it and went back out into the alley, crouching once again to see under the skip. The Nidoran had its back pressed to the brick wall behind it, and nothing short of a crowbar was getting it away from what it deemed as safety. Well, a crowbar or, Tony hoped, Herdier. Right on cue, his dog appeared beside him, looking at him expectantly. Tony nodded to the terrified Pokémon beneath the skip. Herdier knew him entirely too well, because that was all it took for the dog to lie flat on the ground, nose facing Nidoran, and begin making low, calming sounds that eased Tony’s temper as much as they told Nidoran that nobody was going to hurt it. Wordless communication between Tony Stark and another living being – Tony knew several people who would swear it wasn’t possible, including Tony himself the majority of the time.

It took five minutes and Tony backing off, but Herdier coaxed the Nidoran out from under the skip. It was purple (male then, Tony thought, looking it over), and limping badly on its front left leg. The limb was sprained, at the very least, likely broken. Tony looked over his shoulder to see the newly hired chef watching carefully.

“Call a doctor,” he said, keeping his voice level so as not to undo all Herdier’s work. “Tell them to go up to my office. We’ll meet them up there.”

The boy nodded and left, looking between Tony and the Pokémon with an expression midway between curiosity and respect. Good to see that there was somebody who didn’t regard Tony’s caring streak as weakness.

Herdier nudged Tony’s legs, and he looked down to see his dog carefully pressing as much of his body against Tony’s legs as he could manage without pushing the human over. Tony caught on to what he was trying to do and slowly bent down to stroke him between the ears and down his spine. Herdier arched into the touch, which he didn’t usually do, but this was about showing Nidoran that he could trust Tony, so contact was good. The purple Pokémon slowly, very slowly, limped forward, pausing just outside Tony’s reach. He eyed Tony warily, then took the final few steps forward and nudged Tony’s knee with his horn. Tony carefully bent at the knees and scooped the Pokémon up, making sure not to jostle the injured leg, then turned and walked back into the building, Herdier clearing a path ahead of them.

He wasn’t going to make that meeting.

***

Tony was drunk. He’d gone out with Rhodey, as promised, and the two had spent three hours reminiscing about more and more obscure details from MIT as the number of drinks increased, then Rhodey had waxed lyrical for an hour about his travels, which ultimately led back to the reason Tony was on his tenth drink of the night, even when he knew he’d have to put up with Herdier’s Disappointed Face the next day; the dog hated when Tony got drunk. Ditto just crawled on him and transformed into a blanket if Tony had had enough to pass out somewhere that wasn’t his bed. It didn’t happen often, but every time it was a toss-up which was more painful; the inevitable hangover or Herdier’s refusal to look at him until he apologised. He never promised not to do it again though. Tony may be a master at lying (growing up in the press does that to a person), but he never lied to his Pokémon. He would not alienate the best friends he had because his mouth ran away with him, and beside that they wouldn’t believe him anyway, which made it kind of pointless.

Ok, so maybe Tony was _very_ drunk. He didn’t usually go off on tangents quite that random when he was sober. But, in his defence, Rhodey was joining the military, and Tony was trying his best not to imagine his best friend on the wrong end of a gun – that always looked like Stark Industries weapons in Tony’s head and he _really_ needed to change the design now, because that was going to haunt him – and the alcohol helped drive the horrifying thoughts from his mind.

The girls helped too. Tony, by virtue of being Howard fucking Stark’s son, was immediately recognisable to pretty much everybody, and Rhodey was handsome enough to turn heads; the two of them combined were quite enough to have several girls join them, two draping themselves over Rhodey’s lap and another three sitting between the men, one (Tony thought her name was Eleonora, but there were two brunettes in the group surrounding him and they were both wearing green, so he wasn’t sure) slowly climbing astride Tony as she nibbled her way along his collarbone. He pulled her up into a sloppy, drunken kiss as she finally straddled his lap, and she moaned into his mouth. The other brunette leaned in against their sides and licked a line down Tony’s pulse and up the other girl’s, joining them in an uncoordinated three-way kiss that was more a collision of mouths than anything else.

This was _definitely_ helpful. He was going to call it therapy, and justify it as such to Pepper when she found out and got mad at him for risking his company’s reputation.

Besides, Rhodey was having just as good a time with the other three – two redheads and a blonde – and he was supposed to be the good influence. So, really, this was all Rhodey’s fault. Tony grinned and tried to refine the kiss to something that wouldn’t leave bruises around his jawline. It ended up with the girls kissing on his lap while he watched, and he was totally ok with that. He was moving this party someplace else though, and now, because otherwise he was going to get kicked out of yet another club, and he actually liked this place.

He dragged his attention from the orgy on his lap for a moment to lean over and punch Rhodey in the upper arm. The older man flinched and pulled back from his groupies, sending Tony a look that said the interruption had better be important. Tony leaned over and talked loudly into the other man’s ear to be heard over the music and the girls.

“I’m taking the girls to a hotel or something now; see you back at my apartment in the morning.”

Rhodey nodded, grinning, and pulled Tony’s head forwards, pressing a kiss to his forehead.

“Have a good time.”

“You too, honeybear!”

And with an exaggerated wink, Tony pushed at the girls on his lap until they stood, then threw an arm around each of their waists and led them to the door. The bouncers raised their eyebrows at him, shot each other amused glances, and waved them off, one calling a “ _good_ night, Mr Stark!” at his back, which made Tony laugh and pull the girls in closer to his side as he tried to guide them down the street in the direction of a hotel that he knew. They made it around one corner before stumbling into a small alleyway between buildings with arms and hands and lips everywhere, and ok, they weren’t going to make it to the hotel. That was ok.

That was _so_ ok.

Tony pulled the girls against a wall, taking the hard surface against his own back while they writhed against his front, and grinned into their mouths. Three hands grabbed against his stomach, sliding under his shirt, and another pulled at his hair. He moaned at the sensation.

That was when the cold _click_ of a gun being cocked ruined Tony’s night.

All three of them stopped moving instantly, the hands against his skin freezing in place, nails digging into his ribcage as the fingers formed an involuntary fist. The barrel of the gun poked between the girl’s heads, pointed at Tony’s nose. One of the brunettes squeaked in fear. Tony wasn’t sure if he wished they would scream or not; it would draw attention from the two fucking huge bouncers just up the road, but it also might startle the guy on the other end of the gun, and Tony did not want that. He liked his face the way it was, it didn’t need a hole between his eyes.

The man pushed one of the girls away from Tony, further into the alleyway, and she fell against the brick wall with a small cry. Tony bit his lip as the gun pressed flush against his forehead, lifting his hands away from the other girl to show that he was unarmed. The gun pressed harder against him, and he froze.

“Whoa, easy…”

“Shut up,” the gunman ordered, voice low in what was probably an attempt to not draw attention from the bouncers. He used his free hand to pull the other girl towards him; she screamed, but he snapped the gun under her chin, and she muffled the noise quickly. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pressed his free hand across her lips. “Not a sound, bitch.”

She nodded, and the gun returned to its previous position. Tony pressed closer against the wall, which was currently the only thing holding him upright. Alcohol plus far too much adrenaline was making his knees shake, and also appeared to have gotten his fight-or-flight response stuck on ‘oh-shit-this-is-bad’.

Muffled whimpers from the two girls, and the tear tracks running down their faces told Tony that they were in the same position. At least it wasn’t just him.

The gunman was talking again. Tony tried to pay attention, uncrossing his eyes from their focus on the end of the gun and looking at the man beyond. It was dark, and Tony was very drunk and scared, so he made out dark hair and pale skin, but that was about it. Damnit. He hated being fuzzy on details. He forced his eyes to focus, and saw the man’s mouth moving.

Right, he was talking. What was he saying?

“…money, now!”

Of course. He was Howard fucking Stark’s son; everybody and their dog knew who he was, and they all knew he was a billionaire. He really should have expected this. Thinking about it, he was kind of surprised he hadn’t been mugged before.

“Now!”

Tony flinched, then winced as the movement knocked his skull against the wall. He reached down to his jeans pocket, trying to remember which one his wallet was in, when the little light filtering into the alley from the main road suddenly cut off. The gunman turned his attention in that direction, and the gun lowered an inch. Tony sucked in a breath and shot his gaze sideways. He couldn’t see properly – there was a gun blocking a lot of his view – but he thought he recognised the blurry shape as one of the bouncers from the nightclub. He really hoped it was, and that this wasn’t some kind of backup for the mugger.

“Want to back up there?” the newcomer asked, tone light, and Tony knew that voice; it was the bouncer who’d wished him a good night. His knees folded in relief, and he slid to the floor, the wall no longer adequate enough to keep him upright. He was a little busy being relieved and staring at the floor to follow exactly what happened next, but a high-pitched scream caught his attention, and he looked up to see the bouncer supporting the girl that had been held hostage with one arm while holding the gunman against the wall with the other. The gun was on the floor by Tony’s feet. The girl to his right burst into noisy tears; Tony felt quite like joining her, but wasn’t quite drunk enough to give in to the impulse.

Another bouncer joined their rescuer, taking the gunman off his hands, and the first bouncer sat the girl he was holding on the floor next to Tony so he could call the police. She curled against his side and cried into his shoulder, the other girl crawling up against his other side and burying her head in his lap, tears soaking into his jeans. Tony sighed and let his head fall back against the wall, closing his eyes as the adrenaline flushed from his system, leaving him exhausted.

***

An hour later, after convincing the paramedics to take the girls to the hospital while leaving him behind, he managed to find the bouncer who’d rescued them and caught his attention. The man smiled as Tony beckoned him over to talk.

“Mr Stark. You alright? I can call the ambulance back if you want?”

Tony scoffed and waved his hand in a motion that was meant to be dismissive, but almost swatted the bouncer on the nose. He pulled away sheepishly. “Sorry. And thank you, you know, for saving me. Us. The girls. They needed saving. Thank you.”

The bouncer shook his head, amused. “No problem, Mr Stark. Just doing my job.”

A light went on in Tony’s head.

“Yes! You were! I mean, will be. If you want to? I want you to, you’d be great, and I like you, you’re so happy all the time. So, I want you to. Do you want you to?”

The bouncer – who Tony was officially calling Happy and screw his actual name – gave Tony a very confused look. “I’m sorry?”

“Job. If you want?” Tony clarified. Happy’s expression didn’t change.

“Are you offering me a job?”

“Yes! See, you could work for me, doing… this, and I pay well, ask Pepper, she bought new shoes last week, she’s been wearing them around the office for the last three days and they’re making her feet hurt, but she won’t take them off because they were expensive and she wants to get her money’s worth… I ramble when I’m drunk, but I want you to take the job, because I like you and you’re so happy. Will you do it?”

Happy raised one eyebrow at Tony, not looking convinced, so Tony rummaged around in his pockets until he found a business card. He handed it to Happy, being careful not to thrust it too hard and accidentally punch the man, and Happy took it.

“Look, think about it and call me; my number’s on there and my phone’s always on. Even in meetings; it drives Pepper nuts. So, yeah. Call me.”

That was when Rhodey managed to talk his way through the policemen guarding Tony and took the younger man in a hug. He was walking in a very straight line, which meant that he was sober again and Tony was going to be in so much trouble with Pepper.

“Tony! Never scare me like that again.”

“Honeybear!” Tony cried, cuddling close and pressing a kiss to Rhodey’s forehead. “Happy is going to call me when he wants to be my bodyguard. I like him.”

Rhodey sighed. “I’m sure you do, Tones.” He looked over Tony’s head at Happy, who was once again amused. “Thank you for looking after him.”

“No problem,” Happy said again, smiling, and nodded at Tony, now clinging to Rhodey’s waist. “You should take him home.”

“Yeah, we’re going. Thank you again.”

“Call me!” Tony called as Rhodey pulled him away. Happy waved at him, and Tony grinned and sagged some more against Rhodey. “I like him.”

“I know,” Rhodey said tolerantly.

***

The next day, Tony got a phone call asking if the job was still available. Well, Happy asked if he remembered making the offer, but it amounted to the same thing.

The new addition to the Stark household was the only thing that stopped Pepper murdering him when she found out what had happened. Nothing could stop Herdier’s Disappointed Look.


	7. Jarvis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for this taking so long, I have no excuses. I hope it's worth the wait.
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: Tony!feels and Ditto, but no real trigger warnings.

**January 1998, New York**

The next three months saw a number of changes in Tony’s life, all of which happened at about the same time and later, made him wonder how the hell he’d gotten through it all without going insane. He probably had Pepper to thank for that – she was running his life far better than he’d ever managed, even with her new shadow. 

The Nidoran that Tony had rescued had latched onto Pepper, reminding Tony very much of a spiny purple gosling as he followed her around, limping slightly on his bandaged leg – the limb had been broken, but Pokémon were much hardier than normal animals and just a week later it was already almost fully healed. Cindy had apparently taken to nursing him, and Ruby shot glares at anybody who so much as looked at the creature wrong – he had well and truly integrated himself into the Potts’ family. Pepper coped remarkably well with her new Pokémon’s injuries, slowing her walking speed so he could keep up without problems and somehow still managing to get everywhere on time and beat Tony to his meetings. Though, the latter may have been because he tended to skip meetings whenever he could. Especially with the Board members – they all had huge sticks up their asses, and he hated trying to explain himself to them, which usually led to them feeling patronised and then Pepper told him off. He _hated_ Board meetings. 

He had been on time – early even, which had startled both Pepper and Herdier, and tempted Ditto into transforming into a pocket watch to point out the time – to the meeting with the Stark Industries military liaison. Who had, as asked, brought along new recruit James Rhodes. Everybody left that meeting much happier; the military were getting new body armour and an overhaul on the promised weaponry, all for a price that would make the Board pull their hair out, but Tony thought was reasonable – SI was still going to turn a profit, Tony hadn’t lost the business sense Obie had drummed into him, and Obie himself hadn’t said much beyond telling Tony to let R &D do their jobs, and not give the Chief Engineer a heart attack by demanding so many new designs in so little time ever again. 

He also approved of Tony _finally_ hiring himself an actual bodyguard. Well, bodyguard-cum-driver-cum-personal-trainer, as Happy had ended up. The man was a boxer, and as soon as Tony had found this out, he’d demanded a demonstration, then lessons. Ok, so the lessons had been Happy’s idea, but they provided the workout that was missing from his day now that he was no longer swimming every morning. Plus hey, building muscle mass was never a bad thing, especially when you spent all your spare time in a workshop with lots of heavy metal things and a couple of robots who were supposed to help you lift said heavy things, but spent more time dropping stuff on your foot and aiming fire extinguishers at things that _do not need extinguishing, put that down now before I lock your joints and turn you into a hat stand_. 

So yes, Tony’s life was running at its usual level of insanity. Moreso, really, considering that Happy’s Pokémon – a Watchog that the ex-bouncer had imaginatively named Lookout – had taken his human’s assessment that Tony needed to keep a more vigilant eye on his surroundings to heart, and kept hiding in strange places, popping up when Tony least expected it to spit seeds at him. Supposedly, it was a test of his observational skills, but Tony suspected that Ditto had put Lookout up to it, because the blob found the entire situation far too amusing. 

Then there was Joanna. 

Tony… did not know what on earth he’d done to deserve her, but it was probably in a former life, and it must have been _really_ good. He had met her at some charity event that Stark Industries funded – something to do with Pokémon in combat, he wasn’t quite certain – and she had been a semi-permanent fixture in his life for the last two months. He’d been bored out of his skull, greeting uppity rich people with false smiles and fake laughter, Obie at his back and Herdier at his side, both of them doing a great deal more towards getting donations for the cause than him. Ditto had been banned from the event on the grounds of not causing a tabloid-worthy scandal, but Tony was beginning to wish he’d found a way to smuggle the blob in, because this was _dull_. 

Then Joanna came up to him, a Linoone draped over her shoulders, and asked Tony if he knew of a good place that would deliver pizza to the event, because the spread SI had put out was all canapés and she was hungry, damnit. Tony didn’t stand a chance. 

Seven weeks later, their relationship had somehow become _global_ news (what the fuck?), and various tabloids were spreading all kinds of rumours, from Joanna blackmailing him into dating her, and that was why he was no longer playing the field (Tony had once slept with the journalist writing that particular piece; he sensed a sore spot) to speculation that she was pregnant. One even started hinting that there was an engagement on the horizon, which had terrified Tony more than all the others combined; he’d snorted at the ridiculous headlines then allowed Ditto to turn itself into a small flamethrower and burn them. The engagement one though… he really hoped Joanna didn’t believe it. 

Joanna’s reaction to the headlines was _screw them and their bullshit_ , which Tony loved. She laughed aloud at the declaration that Tony had been seen ring shopping, then joked that she wanted a rock that was actually big enough to be seen from space, or at least would make it impossible to lift her left hand. Tony had swallowed rather hard at that, but the sheer fact that the joke hadn’t sent him scurrying the opposite direction told him that he was in this for the long haul. So was Joanna, if the way she was riding out the media storm was anything to go by. A warm thrill ran through him at that realisation. He was in a relationship with somebody who actually cared about him enough to stay put through the torture that was the press; that was a first, and he found he really liked the feeling. It was nice, being wanted. 

Somehow, since inheriting SI, Tony had gotten himself a family. Pepper, Happy, Obie, Joanna… He was even spending more time with Rhodey than he’d thought, because of the clause he’d had drafted into the military contract. All in all, Tony was happier than he could ever remember being. 

Of course, he was _Tony fucking Stark_ , so he should have known that it couldn’t last. 

*** 

**October 2000, Clifftop House, Malibu**

“Tony…” 

Tony was beginning to wish he’d never convinced Pepper to call him by his first name; it was all he’d heard from her in the last three weeks, and it was beginning to grate on his nerves. Well, less the name than the increasing levels of pity it contained. He gritted his teeth. He did not need pity, thank you very much. 

“Ms Potts. Unless you are here to tell me that the R &D department had completed its move to the California base, I have no need of your services. Get out.” 

Pepper didn’t move from her spot in the middle of his workshop, and the disapproving growls from all the Pokémon present echoed off the concrete walls and told him that he’d finally found the line; even Ditto was judging him. He sighed and turned off the soldering iron in his hand, laying it carefully on the table in front of him. 

“What do you want?” It was the closest he was going to get to saying ‘sorry’, and she took the implied apology as only someone who had put up with Tony for long periods of time could. The Pokémon relaxed, and Ditto appeared from somewhere behind Tony and crawled up his arm to rest against his neck. He lifted his shoulder, and Ditto took the implied hug and plastered itself to his throat in an enthusiastic reciprocation. Tony had to quirk a smile at that, which was no doubt what the blob had been going for. 

Pepper took a step forward, laying a gentle hand on Tony’s free shoulder. He twitched under the contact, trying his best not to flinch away from her, but she snatched her hand back regardless, her face pinched in worry. Tony sighed and looked back down at the circuit board he’d been fiddling with. 

“Tony,” she said, voice little more than a whisper. He clenched a fist at the tone, but didn’t snap at her again, which Herdier seemed to approve of, if the head resting in his lap was any indication. He carded his fingers through the Pokémon’s fur, focussing on the sensation of the hair over his skin rather than Pepper’s voice. It didn’t stop him hearing every word she said, in that damn sympathetic tone that made him want to scream that he wasn’t made of glass. Steel, maybe, or iron; something hard and shatter-proof. He had to be, because the press wouldn’t let him be anything less, and they were all over him every time he left the Malibu house now, looking for any sign of weakness, anything they could market and splash all over the front page. He’d put up with it for a week, perfecting his I’m-Tony-fucking-Stark-I’m-untouchable act, then given up trying to dodge them and stayed inside. It was that, or punch the next twat who asked him how he felt about the breakup in the nose, and if he did that, Pepper would actually kill him. 

“You’ve been in here for three days, and you haven’t left the house in almost two weeks. I’m worried about you Tony; everyone is. James Rhodes called me three times in the last hour alone, and Obadiah can only keep the Board off your back for so long. Please, Tony, let me call somebody. You need help.” 

Herdier licked Tony’s wrist in a show of support for her words. Tony pulled his hand back; he wasn’t so broken that he needed the kind of help she was suggesting. He wasn’t. 

Maybe if he repeated it often enough, he’d start to believe it. 

No, Joanna hadn’t broken him. She’d done everything in her power _not_ to hurt him, but there was no way that her leaving wouldn’t leave him a shattered wreck in her wake, and the press were always going to fucking eat that up, and he’d be a victim one day and it’d be his fault the next, and so would Joanna, and she didn’t deserve that, didn’t deserve _him_. She was worth so much more, more than anything Tony could offer her, and now he was pitying _himself_ in his own head, and this needed to stop. 

Maybe Pepper had a point. 

Hell, he couldn’t even _touch_ another person without flinching, without remembering the feel of Joanna’s lips brushing his, a whisper of a touch, before she stroked his cheek and turned around and left him alone. Oh, his Pokémon were fine, they’d plastered themselves to him as soon as Joanna was out the door, and hadn’t left his side since; their touches were the only things holding him together. It was people he had trouble with. Well, fuck that. He was fixing this, and he didn’t need any therapist to help him. He had a simple solution; it involved lots of alcohol, a pre-paid hotel room and a nightclub that refused to let press inside on principle. 

“Tony?” 

Tony looked up at Pepper, who was now wearing her I-know-you’re-plotting-something-I’m-going-to-disapprove-of face, and Tony grinned, because it was miles better than the worried looks she’d been shooting him for the last however long, he no longer cared. 

“I’m fine Pepper. I don’t need help. I need Happy. Tell him to meet me out front in an hour. Hang on, what time is it?” 

Pepper frowned at him. 

“Tony…” 

“Time, Pepper?” 

She sighed. “Eight pm.” 

“Make it two hours.” 

“Tony, you’re not planning what I think you’re planning, are you?” 

Tony shrugged, pushing the circuit board he’d been fiddling with for the last eighty-odd hours aside and standing up, stepping around Herdier when the Pokémon reused to move. “Given the judgement in your tone, probably.” 

“Tony…” 

“You wanted me to leave the house, Pep, what’s the problem?” He paused, Herdier’s Disappointed Face making him realise that he was being a jerk again, then sighed. “I promise not to do anything tabloid-worthy, ok? Just, you’re right, I need to get out. Out of the house… out of my head. Just for a while. It’s not a nice place to be right now.” 

Ok, that was probably a little more honesty than necessary, but it had the desired result. Pepper relented, reluctantly, and promised to have Happy waiting outside for him in two hours. She walked towards the door, hesitated, then came back over and brushed a light kiss across his cheek. 

“Be careful, Tony,” she said, voice low, then she was gone, and Tony was alone with his Pokémon. Herdier was giving him a Look that made him squirm, but wasn’t getting in his way, so while the dog didn’t approve of Tony’s idea of therapy, he wasn’t going to stop him either. Tony knelt down and buried his face in Herdier’s neck. 

“I’ll be careful, promise,” he whispered, and Herdier licked the back of his neck. Ditto squirmed, making Tony laugh, and he looked up. “Thank you.” 

Herdier licked his nose, gave Ditto a look that translated roughly into ‘I don’t know why I’m trusting you, but I am, so don’t screw this up’, then stood up and left the lab in the same manner as Pepper. Tony lifted his hand to cup over Ditto’s form. 

“Looks like it’s you and me, buddy.” 

Ditto made a high-pitched noise right in Tony’s ear, making him wince, then he stood and headed for the shower that was in a small room adjacent to his workshop. He smelled like solder and sweat, and that was not the impression he wanted to make upon his return to the wider world. 

*** 

**December 2000, Clifftop House, Malibu**

Tony snorted at that day’s headline – _Stark Sex Scandal_ – and threw the newspaper onto the workshop bench. The press was full of such shit. Alright, so in the last six weeks he’d slept with a lot of different women, but the girl who’d managed to make the front page – and _really?_ Was there no other news they could be reporting? – by claiming that the baby bump she sported proudly was courtesy of him was not one of them. He didn’t even recall seeing her before, and as she was at least five months gone, probably more judging by the size of her stomach, he knew with certainty that it wasn’t his. He’d been a one-woman man for two years, after all. His lawyers would sort this out, he didn’t doubt that, and he knew without needing to ask that Pepper was already running interference for him and threatening to sue everybody even mildly related to the article – there would be a retraction in the afternoon editions. In really big font, because when Pepper lost her temper, she was even scarier than Ruby, and Tony loved that she was on his side. 

Ditto slinked off his shoulder and manoeuvred itself beneath the newspaper, then transformed into a shredder, making a very satisfied noise as strips of paper flew into the air. Tony smirked and patted the side of shredder-Ditto, keeping his fingers well away from the whirling blades. Herdier shook himself to rid his fur of the shreds and glared, but licked Tony’s wrist and rested his head on his human’s knee. Tony patted him too. 

“Thanks Ditto.” 

Ditto whirred its blades one more time, then morphed back to its usual form and crawled onto Herdier’s head. The dog shook it off, and the blob grinned obscenely from the floor before returning to its usual perch on Tony’s shoulder. Tony shook his head, amused by their antics. 

“You don’t have to cheer me up, you know. I’m not upset. Mildly annoyed, maybe, but not upset.”

Herdier huffed into his leg and nosed his hand, asking Tony to continue the scalp massage. He obliged, smiling as the dog tilted his head into the contact.

“Love you too, boy.”

Dummy perked up as Tony said that, beeping and wheeling across the workshop with a hopeful air about him. Butterfingers and You, the newest incarnation of Tony’s AI-arm design, followed behind. Tony laughed and shook his head, using his free hand to push Dummy’s questing claw away.

“No, this is not ‘everyone-gets-stroked-by-Daddy’ time; this is ‘everybody-do-some-work’ time. You, Butterfingers, get back to whatever it was you were doing. Dummy, clean this mess up. No, no, you do not need the fire extinguisher to clean up paper! Put it down now! Ditto, don’t you dare…”

Tony facepalmed as Ditto, ever gleeful in encouraging chaos, transformed into a small flamethrower and began to spit tiny flares at the robot, who squirted the fire extinguisher with relish. Herdier lifted his head grumpily, annoyed that the scratching behind his ears had stopped, and barked at the misbehaving pair. Ditto stopped spitting fire, Dummy stopped spraying foam, and both of them turned to look at the dog. Tony sighed.

“Thanks boy.” He resumed the petting, then tried to give the miscreants a stern look. They both looked rather dejected, so it was harder than it should have been to keep a straight face. “Dummy, cleaning. Now. Ditto, make yourself useful for once and clean up the mess you just made. All this foam? I want it gone.”

Ditto hesitated, then changed back to his normal form, and Tony couldn’t help the laugh that burst out of him. The pink blob was coated in a layer of foam; it looked like a child’s dessert, and the chagrined look on its face when it realised that it was wearing the contents of the fire extinguisher was priceless.

Herdier rolled his eyes and reluctantly pulled away from Tony’s fingers, herding Ditto so that it would actually do the job it had been asked to and not get distracted by something shiny. Tony watched as Ditto sulkily allowed itself to be shepherded towards the sink in the corner of the room, where it wrapped itself around the tap to turn the water on. A snail-trail of foam traced the path it had taken across the floor. Tony shook his head. His life would not be the same without the eternal chaos his Pokémon and bots caused.

They were his family, really, moreso than any of the people in his life were. Pepper and Happy were paid to put up with him and his penchant for loud noises and general bedlam; Obie was there for SI more than for Tony, and Rhodey… Rhodey was off somewhere, Tony didn’t know where, with the Air Force. He didn’t know how long it had been since they had spoken, and it was even longer since they’d spent any actual time together. Tony missed him.

Rhodey was the only human who’d chosen to be with him. The others had all had Tony thrust upon them, either by untimely deaths (i.e. Howard) or by Tony himself, who was a fucking force of nature when he wanted to be, and most people couldn’t deal with that. The ones who could – and ‘people’ here did not just cover humans, because that was a very bad idea – were all in this lab with him. Ditto, who was currently wearing the shape of a sponge and trying to convince Herdier to pick it up and carry it back over to the mess on the floor, the dog who was shaking his head in a blatant refusal to do so, and the bots who were intelligent enough to choose to ignore him (and took that option more often than Tony would have liked) – they were the ones who had chosen to be there. They were his family, and his friends, and they were not averse to destroying his stuff if they thought it might cheer him up (so sue him, Tony liked explosions). They had picked him.

He looked around the workshop, losing himself in the atmosphere within. You and Butterfingers were chittering to each other over by the firing range as they worked; Dummy had finally put the fire extinguisher down and was sweeping the paper into a pile, whistling to himself as he did so, and sponge-Ditto had grown legs (and that was a bizarre sight that Tony was not going to dwell on) and was walking over to the mass of foam, a sodden Herdier following and looking like he might just kill the sponge given a chance. This was his life, in this room. He was looking at everything of value that he possessed, and it was all in the beings that had chosen him.

So, why was he lonely?

It had taken him a while to admit it to himself, and he was never going to say anything aloud, because Herdier would fuss and he didn’t want to upset his Pokémon by inferring that they weren’t enough. They were, or they should be, but there was still a Joanna-sized hole in his life, and he felt it every damn second. It wasn’t the sex, because he could throw a rock on a street corner and hit several people who would be willing to sleep with him. It wasn’t even the emotional connection, not anymore. It was the feeling of being wanted. He missed the sound of another voice, reminding him to do things like eat and sleep, without the incentive of being paid to keep him alive.

If he was being honest, Tony supposed that he missed feeling human.

That was kind of ridiculous, really. Herdier was more human than most actual humans Tony knew, himself included, but it didn’t change the fact that the only time Tony heard human voices these days were Pepper telling him off or Happy telling him to keep his guard up during boxing lessons. He missed the sound of another person in his space, telling him to go and eat, this could wait until later when she couldn’t hear his stomach from the other side of the room.

Tony rolled his chair over to the stereo and turned AC/DC on full blast, trying to drown out the voice in his memory. It didn’t work, but it did make Herdier flinch, and Ditto took the opportunity to slink away from the almost-clean floor and hide behind Dummy. Herdier wasn’t fooled, but let the sponge go for now, walking over to Tony with his ears plastered flat to his head. Tony sighed and turned the music down.

“Sorry boy.”

Herdier woofed and licked Tony’s wrist. Tony tickled his ears until they stood upright again, then sighed and pushed himself back over to his computer. Humanity he wanted, was it? Well, he could do that, and he didn’t need anybody in his workshop to provide it, either. Human voices could be synthesized, and he knew exactly which voice would be best to remind him that he was, in fact, a human being, and needed to do things like eat and sleep. Joanna had been good, but he wasn’t about to use her voice, because that would drive him crazy in days. He paused, and considered what he was doing, then amended that to crazier. He was already losing it, because he was contemplating installing a voice to keep him company.

He woke up his computer and started coding. Another AI, because if he was doing this, he was doing it properly, and he wanted a human, not a parrot. It could help him with his lab work, and hell, he may as well make it a kind of security system while he was at it, because why the fuck not? No physical body though – he had enough incompetent bots ignoring him as it was, and he didn’t need another one taking up space in his shop. That and he was using an actual voice – putting it in a robotic arm or the like just felt… wrong.

***

**February 2001, Clifftop House, Malibu**

Six weeks later – and two new patents because Tony had needed to invent a hard drive awesome enough to store his AI – it was ready. Tony booted it up, sitting nervously in in workshop as he waited for it to finish installing. Had he gotten the voice right? If he’d messed it up… he hoped he hadn’t messed it up.

Herdier nosed Tony’s clenched fist. He hadn’t realised he’d tensed it, and relaxed, tickling the dog’s ears. Dummy nudged him from behind, almost unseating Ditto from his shoulder, and Tony huffed a small laugh and used his other hand to scratch the ticklish joint, making the bot squeak and recoil.

The speakers built into the ceiling buzzed, then coughed. A male voice rang through them.

“Systems downloaded and fully integrated. Waiting for instruction.”

Tony grinned and let his hands fall back into his lap. It had worked. The voice was perfect. He looked up at the camera he’d linked the new AI into and waved.

“Hello, Jarvis.”

There was a pause, then the voice rang out once more, sounding warm and human and fucking alive, and Tony shook with the effort it took not to cry.

“Hello Sir.”


	8. Aron

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I have no excuses. This is really late, and I am sorry. There is a good deal of cute coming up though, so maybe that makes up for it?
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: discussions of weaponry, but nothing particularly detailed.

**January 2007, Clifftop House, Malibu**

Tony crouched on the floor of his workshop, looking from the box of metal between his knees to the holographic blueprint spinning in the air above.

“Pause it there, Jarvis.”

The hologram stopped spinning and, without being asked, Jarvis highlighted the part of the shell Tony was looking at. Tony squinted, tilting his head to the left and right and eyeing up the dimensions before looking back in the box on the floor and carefully rifling through it for a sheet of metal large and shapely enough to sculpt into a physical embodiment of the hologram. At his side, You chirped and clapped his claw, offering help. Tony found a sheet that fit his requirements and nodded at his bot.

“Ok boy, hold this for me… That’s it. Now, make sure you don’t drop it; I’m kind of attached to both my arms, and I don’t want them crushed. Just a moment longer… Dummy, come over here and help.”

Dummy beeped and wheeled closer. He had originally been banned from helping due to an unfortunate accident involving this exact box and Tony’s left foot. It still hurt, but Tony could live with a few bruised toes; if he had to struggle to extract the metal for much longer, he’d be an arm missing and bleeding out, and boy would Pepper be mad at him then. Dummy was the lesser of two evils here.

“Hold this for me… no, not there; your arm is made of metal, and I can’t see through it. Lower down. Lower. _Lower_. Oh for God’s sake, _there_. Thank you.”

With Dummy’s support, Tony got the metal free without injury. Butterfingers beeped at him hopefully from the other side of the lab. He shook his head, standing and lifting the metal sheet onto a nearby worktable.

“No. If I get anything else dropped on me today I am going to end up in the emergency room, and I do not like the emergency room. I do not want to go there. You can put that down now, guys.”

The last was spoken to the other bots, who dropped the sheets they were supporting with a crash. Tony winced. Stoutland had to have heard that. Sure enough, the dog appeared in the lab seconds later, ears standing straight up. He glared when he saw Tony, who tried to look innocent. He didn’t think he pulled it off very well.

He’d been up for the last two days straight, which was what had his oldest Pokémon annoyed. The dog hated it when Tony skipped things like sleep and food, and since he had evolved last year, he was finally large enough to physically push Tony out of his lab when necessary. Tony would have removed his access to the room, but that was a sure-fire way to piss him off, and he didn’t want to do that. Ditto’s was revoked at the moment though, which Stoutland thoroughly approved of. Tony was quite attached to his Aston Martin, thank you very much, and didn’t appreciate having to reupholster the entire backseat. He didn’t know how Ditto had covered it in oil and what Tony thought was strawberry jelly, and he didn’t think he wanted to know either. Jarvis had said that was probably for the best.

Stoutland barked at Tony and walked over, disappointment in his gaze. The dog had been Ditto-watching, on the understanding that Tony would get some sleep and not keep working all through the night. Again. Tony had come to the workshop from a Board meeting the day before, intent on finishing his blueprint (which he had done, screw the six-to-eight-days-minimum prediction the Chief Engineer had given for the very same design), and the creating buzz had hit him. He had spent too long recently in suits and ties and rooms that smelt of furniture polish. His return to the grease-and-gunpowder scent of his workshop had thrown him into the kind of creative mood that was getting less common the more time he spent in meetings.

So, yeah, sleep hadn’t happened.

Tony smiled at Stoutland and tried to pretend he hadn’t been about to start welding on 35 hours without sleep.

“Hey, buddy. What’s Ditto up to?”

The distraction didn’t work, not that Tony really expected it to. He sighed as Stoutland rolled his eyes and walked over, pushing at Tony’s knees with his head. He resisted for a moment, then let himself be pushed towards the door, waving a hand at the hologram to close it down.

“Save all Jarvis. I’ll carry on when my babysitter here lets me out to play again.”

“Very good, Sir,” Jarvis said. “I shall instruct Dummy and You to put your toys away neatly.”

Tony flipped off the camera as he walked passed, ignoring the bark of laughter from Stoutland.

***

Three hours later, Tony was woken by Jarvis coughing over the intercom. He groaned and rolled over. He didn’t sleep often, but when he did, he liked to savour it, damnit. Any time before midday was too damn early.

“Not now, honey, I’m sleeping…”

Stoutland made a huffing sound from somewhere on the other side of the room. The dog had his own room, as did Ditto, but they spent most of their nights in with Tony when he actually went to bed. Tony shot a scowl in the general direction the noise had come from and pulled a pillow over his head. He promptly shoved it off again when it wriggled and hugged him.

“Ditto, if you don’t stop doing that, I’m shutting you out of this room too.”

“Sir,” Jarvis interrupted, making Tony groan and roll onto his back. The lights came on in response. Tony hissed and threw his arms over his face like a bad B-movie Dracula.

“Hell, Jarvis! Are you trying to blind me?”

“Apologies, Sir, but there is a situation in the workshop, and it requires your attention.”

Tony frowned and carefully lowered his arms. The lights dimmed as he did so, so he sat up gingerly, making sure not to put his hands on anything that might be Ditto in disguise.

“Did you shut everything off when I left?”

“I did, Sir,” Jarvis replied, sounding a little miffed that Tony thought otherwise. “It is not related to the missile.”

“Then what the hell, J? Unless the bots are wrecking my cars – in which case I’m donating all of them to city colleges and making new ones that actually do what I tell them, useless bastards – then there is no situation. Handle it; it’s what you’re there for. I’m going back to sleep.”

Tony waved one arm half-heartedly, flopping back onto the bed. Stoutland made a low sound in the back of his throat; Tony flipped him off.

“You can shut up as well. You wanted me to sleep – I’m sleeping.”

“The bots are not the cause of this, Sir. Please.”

Tony moaned and rolled his head on the pillows, then gave up on sleep and shoved himself upright, throwing his legs off the side of the bed.

“Fine. Fucking fine. But only because you said ‘please’; you learned your manners from me, and I don’t say ‘please’, so this had better be fucking important, J, or I’m re-programming you with the implement of Ditto’s choice. Something sharp.”

One of Tony’s pillows shimmered and disappeared, turning into a replica of one of the larger hammers Tony used in the forge. He blinked, too tired to roll his eyes.

“Or, you know, blunt. Whichever. I don’t care.”

“Very good, Sir,” Jarvis drawled, and yeah, that was the sarcastic bastard Tony knew and loved. “Are you planning of walking to the workshop barefoot? The tiles are cold.”

“Yeah yeah,” Tony said, rubbing at his eyes with the back of one hand and reaching along the bed with the other, pulling one of the warmer sheets over his shoulders. He leaned down and found slippers from somewhere under his bed – and what the hell, he didn’t even know he owned those – shoved his feet into them and zombie-walked down to his workshop. Stoutland followed behind, Ditto (once more pink and blobby) riding on his back.

The workshop was wrecked.

Well, ok, it wasn’t that bad. Tony had actually done worse to it himself, like that time he made a small miscalculation with the latest prototype thrusters and set the place on fire. This was definitely fixable – the bots were already working on it, though Butterfingers was doing more supervising than moving, which Tony thought wise. Jarvis had probably been behind that little bit of logic.

Tony walked in, much more awake in the face of the scattered fragments of metal and two knocked-over worktables. He leaned down and helped Dummy right one of them, patting the bot’s camera when he bleeped happily.

“Thanks boy.”

Dummy buzzed and started picking up the debris that had been trapped under the furniture. Tony kicked the remains of a coffee cup half-heartedly and shook his head.

“What the hell happened in here, J?”

“I do not know, Sir.”

Tony blinked.

“How can you not know? You have access to every security camera in the place, and there are like, six in here. Hell, they even have thermal imaging in case some bastard tries to sneak in through the vents!”

“Nothing thermal registered on the cameras.”

Tony shook his head.

“Then what the hell? Something knocked this lot over. Bring up the images on the main screen, J.”

The blank wall lit up with footage from the cameras, set out in three-by-two squares. The timestamp on the images was from twenty minutes earlier, and the room looked just as he’d left it. He squinted at the wall, looking for movement.

There was a loud clanging noise from behind him; Tony spun around to see Dummy and You lifting the other fallen worktable with the help of a third robot arm. Tony looked over at Butterfingers, still standing at the far side of the room rearranging the table surface to something approaching its original layout, then back at the three bots now pushing the table back to its proper position. The one in the middle had writing on its arm – DIT-O. Tony rolled his eyes.

“Smartass,” he grumbled, but called thanks over and turned back to the camera footage. He’d missed something while he’d been distracted, because the sheet of metal he’d been working on earlier was on the floor, not the bench. He frowned.

“Rewind camera 3. Zoom.”

Jarvis did as asked and Tony watched, perplexed, as the table wobbled and the metal slid free, seemingly on its own. He blinked hard and rubbed his eyes.

“Do we have a ghost?”

“Ghost-type Pokémon register on the thermal cameras as cold spots, Sir. There is no such anomaly.”

“What about an actual ghost?”

There was a pause, where everyone looked at Tony like he’d lost his mind, then Jarvis answered haltingly.

“I assume they would register the same way on the cameras, supposing their existence is factual.”

Tony shook his head.

“I need coffee. And Pepper. In that order, please. You?”

The bot cheeped and rolled over to the small coffeemaker Tony had installed over by the sink. Stoutland nosed Tony’s thigh and nodded at the camera images, now showing the workbenches falling over. This time, there was movement to accompany the crashing. Tony blinked.

“Jarvis, camera 5! Pause!”

The feed stopped, and Jarvis enlarged the screen to cover the whole wall. There was something low to the ground, just about visible at the far left of the screen. Something that did not belong in Tony’s shop. Unfortunately, the lights had been turned off, so without a thermal image to give definition, it was a grey blob half-concealed by a desk.

“What is that?”

“No heat signature. Non-organic.”

“Very useful,” Tony drawled, rubbing his temples. You nudged him and Tony took the offered coffee cup (miraculously, one had survived whatever had happened in the lab). “Thanks boy. Is it still in here?”

“The cameras have not detected any presence, organic or otherwise, leaving the workshop since this footage was captured.”

“A ‘yes’ would do, thanks Jarvis. So, what you’re saying is you called me out of bed at too-fucking-early…”

“The time is 5:17 am, Sir.”

“… to come down to my workshop, which is mysteriously destroyed, and the thing that did the wrecking is still in here? With me. Thanks for that, J. Really. Nice to know you love me.”

“Whatever it is, Sir, it came in with the shipment of parts. It has been in the room with you for hours already without making a move to harm you. It avoided contact with Dummy, You and Butterfingers. I do not believe it to be hostile.”

“Fantastic. So, what is it then?”

Stoutland barked. Tony looked over and saw bot-Ditto standing next to Dummy, and moving its arm in odd, jerky motions. It took him a few moments to work out that it was attempting to teach the bot how to dance ‘the Robot’. Tony closed his eyes.

“I need more coffee.”

***

“Ever think that maybe Ditto doesn’t get the severity of the situation?”

Tony sighed and finished his third cup of coffee. Pepper was far too amused by this.

“It’s being deliberately dense; stress makes it come out in hives. Also, right now, I’m thinking you don’t understand. There is something in my workshop, Pepper. _My workshop_.”

Pepper just shrugged and closed her fingers tighter around her own mug. They had relocated to the kitchen while the bots finished tidying the shop. Ditto and Stoutland had gone back to bed, lucky buggers. Tony stifled a yawn as Pepper started talking again.

“If it can get you out of there and into the office for the first time in three weeks, then I like it. Besides, didn’t you say it hadn’t hurt you?”

“Yes, but…”

“That makes it better than most of the things that are supposed to be in your workshop. Including you, most of the time. Now, your schedule…”

“Pepper, I don’t care. It’s 6am.”

Pepper didn’t look up from the file folder open at her elbow.

“And yet you called me and demanded I hurry over here because there was an ‘emergency’. If I hadn’t already been halfway here, I’d have been very upset, Tony.”

Tony winced. When Pepper got upset, Ruby got pissed, and Tony had to nail everything down and hide until it was over. He’d already fireproofed the most important things, and after the dragon had evolved into a Charizard a couple of years earlier, he’d made the door to his lab smaller so she could no longer fit into the room. Barring access didn’t mean much when she could just follow Pepper in.

“Yeah, about that…”

“You have a meeting with Obadiah for eight thirty. He’s flying in from New York for this, Tony, so go and get dressed. Then, you have a business lunch with a representative from the Japanese shareholders and…”

“No time, Pep. _My workshop_. I can’t.”

Pepper frowned. “You have a business to run, Tony.”

“And I can do it from here. Kind of. Send Obie to the house; he knows where it is anyway, and he can bring pizza.”

“You have a lunch date.”

“Then we won’t get Italian. He’s Japanese; we’ll go to a sushi bar or something. Pepper, please. I need to fix this.”

Pepper narrowed her eyes at him in a look so reminiscent of Ruby that Tony almost expected her to start breathing fire.

“Show me.”

“… The workshop?”

“Yes. Show me. Convince me it’s important enough to warrant staying here.”

“You hate the workshop.”

“I don’t hate the workshop; I just wish you’d spend less time down there. Like now, for instance.”

Tony sighed.

“Fine. This way. Jarvis! Have the bots finished cleaning?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Tony cursed under his breath as he led Pepper downstairs. If it had still been a mess, he’d have had a much better chance of convincing her. Sure enough, when they got to the shop it was in the exact same state of disarray it had been in the week before (damnit, if the bots were going to tidy, they could have done a better job than this). Tony turned to Pepper. Her expression did not read ‘oh-Tony-you-were-right-you-stay-here-and-fix-this-while-I-do-all-the-boring-bits-running-your-company-and-send-Obie-down-here-to-feed-you’. Not that Tony knew what that expression looked like, but it wasn’t this; this was decidedly unimpressed.

“Tony…”

“Pep, please. I need to find out what happened.”

“You have responsibilities, Tony; you can’t hide in your shop and play with your robots all day. Obadiah will be at R&D in two hours, and you are not leaving this house wearing your robe. _Go and get dressed_.”

“Pepper…”

Pepper wasn’t listening. She turned on the ball of her foot and walked towards the door, doing a very good job of ignoring all Tony’s protests. He considered telling Jarvis to lock the door, but that would just piss her off and he didn’t want to do that. Not when he would be locked in the room with her.

It turned out he didn’t need to do anything; Pepper stopped very suddenly about six feet away from the door. Tony heard the squeaking sound she made and was at her side before he realised he’d moved, the bots on his heels.

“What is it?”

Pepper pointed at the crate of scrap metal sitting next to the door.

“That box just moved.”

Tony moved between Pepper and the box in question, Dummy and You rolling up on either side of it. Butterfingers rested his claw on Pepper’s shoulder, either offering support or trying to get a better look, Tony wasn’t sure. The shards of metal in the crate shook as the bots approached it, and a high-pitched noise could just be heard above the sound of clanking metal. Tony frowned.

“Hold on boys; back up. Dummy, _back up_.”

The bots whirred unhappily, and Dummy turned his camera toward Tony in a pose that promised mutiny later, but they backed off. Pepper wrapped her hand around his elbow, stopping him as he started to kneel down.

“Tony…”

“It’s scared, Pep, whatever it is. It’s not going to hurt me.”

Tony didn’t vocalise the _I hope_ that went at the end of that sentence, but Pepper heard it anyway if the squeeze of his arm was anything to go by. He pulled away slowly, wishing Stoutland was there because the dog was so much better at judging these situations than he was. Pepper’s fingers slipped from his arm, and he knelt down, keeping enough distance between himself and the box that he could scramble out of the way if the thing in there did launch itself at him.

“So… hello? Are you alive? I’m not sure if I want the answer to that to be yes or no, because the lack of body temperature worries me if you are, but if not, then something I built gained sentience on its own, and that would be bad.”

His rambling was either cathartic or insulting, or possibly both, because the metal in the box shifted again, exposing a smooth, rounded segment that Tony would not have relegated to the scrap box. The huge blue eyes blinking up at him convinced him that he hadn’t thrown out a perfectly good bit of steel.

“It’s a Pokémon,” he said, stating the obvious as the head lowered back into the box again. Tony leaned forward, making the Pokémon squeak. He backed off, and the Pokémon jumped out of the box, sliding along the recently cleaned floor as it landed and spinning to a stop under the nearest workbench. Tony turned to face it, smiling at the bewildered look on its face. Pepper sighed.

“This is what ruined your workshop?”

Tony nodded, not taking his eyes off the metal form blinking owlishly at him. The Pokémon was tiny, barely a foot tall, and its whole body looked to be coated in steel, which would explain the lack of thermal images on the cameras. Tony recognised it easily.

“It’s an Aron.”

The Pokémon growled at him. He blinked. It sounded offended.

“Sorry? What did I say?”

Pepper made a noise behind him, but he ignored her, trying to work out what the tiny metal creature had taken offense to. It growled again. Tony thought over what he’d just said.

“It?”

He knew Stoutland hated being referred to by the word, and he only used ‘it’ to refer to Ditto because the blob was contrary and when he’d tried using ‘he’ or ‘she’, it had morphed into creatures that were quite obviously the opposite sex. Aron growled again, telling Tony he’d guessed correctly.

“Sorry.” He looked the Pokemon over, trying to find a way to tell without being insulting. It was smaller than most Aron, and had enormous blue eyes. Tony took a shot. “She?”

Aron made a squeaking noise and blinked, somehow managing to shift expressions without the metal carapace moving. She was smiling at him. Tony grinned back.

“She. Are you alright, girl? You’re not hurt?”

She shook her head. Her eyes went – if possible – even bigger, and she looked sad. Tony took another guess.

“I’m not upset about the workshop; you didn’t do it on purpose, did you?”

She shook her head again, still upset. Tony reached forward very slowly, giving her plenty of time to pull away if she wanted. She froze for a moment, then pressed into Tony’s hand, making a mewling sound. He scratched the top of her head with his nails, and she purred, closing her eyes. Tony smiled softly and made a decision that Pepper would probably hate him for, but faced with the tiny Pokémon preening under his hand, he couldn’t bring himself to care.

“Hey, do you want to help me out in here? I’m building some stuff; you could give me a hand if you wanted.”

The blue eyes opened, and that was a happy expression, Tony was certain.

***

Later, when Obie came down to the lab bearing pizza, Aron had befriended the three bots, and coerced them into handing her tools, which she then sorted into piles and handed to Tony as and when he needed them. Tony was torn between being disgusted at his bots for being such pushovers and proud of the tiny girl for taking over his lab so thoroughly.

“Tony!” Obie said, ignoring Ditto and Stoutland, who were lying just inside the doorway watching the bots with amusement. The two exchanged a look, then stood (Ditto climbed onto Stoutland’s back) and left the shop. Tony sat back on his knees, one hand resting on Aron’s back protectively. His two older Pokémon were used to Obie’s attitude, but if the other man started on the little girl, Tony was going to kick him out of the shop, meeting be damned. Obie must have read something in Tony’s gaze, because he didn’t say anything about Tony picking up another stray, merely rolled his eyes and proffered the pizza. Tony took the box and lay it on the floor, making a point of offering Aron a slice before taking one himself. Obie leaned against the desk, eyeing the weapon Tony was in the middle of assembling.

“I was going to ask why Ms Potts told me to meet you down here instead of at R&D, but I see you got… distracted.”

Tony patted the side of the missile carefully.

“R&D take too long. I got bored waiting.”

Obie’s eyes lit up, and he pushed off the desk, giving the missile a closer look.

“ _That’s_ the Jericho?”

“Yup,” Tony said proudly, biting into his second slice of pizza. “Or, it will be. Jarvis, enlarge the hologram, would you?”

Jarvis did as asked, and Obie walked around it in a circle. He’d never quite got the hang of moving the holograms manually. He inspected it for several minutes, then turned to Tony with a grin.

“This is incredible. It took you two days to put this together?”

Tony snorted. “Please. It took me ten hours to finish the blueprint. The rest of the time, I’ve been building.”

“ _Ten hours_? Tony, have you safety-checked any of this?”

Tony shrugged and handed another slice of pizza to Aron. She ate it slowly, eyeing Obie warily and guarding her piles of tools from the intruder in the workshop.

“Not yet; I’m doing it as I go along. It’s only a prototype, Obie, and not a functioning one at that. I’m not suicidal.”

“No,” Obie said, turning back to the blueprint, “you’re not. Good. Still, this is good, Tony. When do you think you’ll have it all finished?”

Tony did a few calculations in his head, factoring in sleep (not enough by most people’s standards, but it would suit him) and the business meetings and various other dull things Pepper would make him do.

“Err… two weeks for a working prototype.”

“And, full-scale production?”

Tony waved a hand, watching Aron defend a wrench from Dummy’s questing claw.

“I don’t know; don’t you usually handle that stuff? Talk to Pepper.”

Obie smirked, pulling a face as he did a few mental calculations of his own.

“If we put a rush on it, and put a hold on the new handgun designs, I think we can get it in the military presentation in Afghanistan next year.”

“Sounds good,” Tony mumbled, filching a screwdriver from Aron’s pile and sticking his tongue out at Dummy when Aron let him take it. Obie sighed and put a hand on his shoulder, bringing his attention back to the older man.

“I think you should give that presentation, Tony.”

Tony blinked.

“Weren’t you going to do that?”

“Yes, but this… Tony, I think you should present this. I worked on weaponry with your father since before you were born, but I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Tony paused, then shrugged. It would get him out of a few Board meetings, and Rhodey was his military liaison, so it would mean spending more time with his best friend. Win-win.

“Sure, whatever.”

Obie grinned and clapped him on the shoulder again.

“Brilliant. I’ll go sort things out; you get working on this.”

“See you,” Tony called over his shoulder, focus already back on the missile he was building. Aron looked from the blueprint to the real thing taking shape, then pulled the screwdriver from Tony’s hand and swapped it for a smaller one. He grinned and scratched her head, making her purr again. She was his favourite lab assistant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have decided to lauch a 'competition' of sorts, if anybody is interested. A few people have asked in comments, so I thought I'd tell everyone here; Tony's Pokemon will not be nicknamed, for reasons that will be explained later in the fic. However, most other people DO nickname theirs, and this is where the competition starts. I have already named some of the Pokemon, but a lot of the others are still in need of names. Each chapter, I'll give a few upcoming Pokemon, and you can comment on what you think their names should be. I'll try not to make it too spoiler-y, but I thought this would be a nice way to get it done, because I am awful at coming up with creative names. Credit will be given to the username who comes up with the one I like the best for each.
> 
> So, for anybody who is interested, I need names for the following Pokemon, who will be coming up in the next few chapters;
> 
> Male Krokorok  
> Female Beedrill  
> Female Espeon
> 
> Thank you in advance, and I hope you have some great names!


	9. Christine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long wait between chapters, and apologies in advance for the wait between this one and the next. I will be moving house shortly, and (hopefully) starting a new job, but the next chapter will be up as soon as I can get it out to you. In the meantime, enjoy this chapter.
> 
> We've finally hit Iron Man 1, so SPOILER WARNINGS. I assume that, if you're reading this, you've seen at least the first film, but I'll put it out there anyway. Some dialogue and scenes are taken directly from the film, though I have adapted them to fit this AU.

**February 2008, Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas**

Tony fiddled with his cufflinks, feeling uncomfortable in a suit for the first time since he was six. This was a new tux, he could tell – Pepper said it wasn’t, but his old one didn’t feel this stiff. Seriously, he could hardly walk in this thing, it was ridiculous…

At his side, Stoutland rolled his eyes and closed his mouth gently on Tony’s wrist. Tony sighed and stopped messing with his sleeves.

“It’s the same tux, Tony, I promise,” Pepper said yet again, not looking up from the small mirror she had propped on her knees while she did her lipstick. She had somehow managed to do all her makeup in the back of a moving car and it looked perfect; from what Tony understood, that was very difficult and Pepper was some kind of superhuman for managing it. “You can check if you like; it still has that ink stain on the lining. It won’t wash out, I don’t know why, but you need to stop making your own writing implements when your biro runs out of ink. Seriously. I had to redo all the paperwork last time you did that.”

Tony sighed and slouched back in his seat. Pepper snapped her mirror shut and slapped Tony’s upper arm with it.

“If you crease that suit, I will personally bribe Jarvis into locking you out of your workshop for an indeterminate amount of time.”

Tony glared but sat up. Stoutland sighed and shook his head. Tony scowled at him too. Pepper gave him a Look.

“It unnerves me when you refuse to talk. Usually I can’t shut you up.”

“I don’t want to be here, Pepper.”

Pepper rolled her eyes.

“Well, tough. It’s an honour, Tony, and you will accept it with good grace. You will smile and you will say thank you and you will not detour into the casino next door. You will give a nice speech, you will… you have the speech. Tony, _tell me_ you brought the speech.”

Tony busied himself looking out the window. She’d read the speech she’d prepared to him earlier; it was very polite and thanked everybody and didn’t contain a single cuss. Tony hated it on principle.

“I brought the speech.”

“Now tell me the truth.”

Tony sighed. “Pep…”

“We’re here, Mr Stark, Ms Potts, Stoutland,” Happy called from the front as the car rolled to a gentle stop. Tony tangled his fingers in Stoutland’s fur and shuffled towards the door. He didn’t want to go to this ridiculous awards ceremony, but once he got out there he was in the spotlight and Pepper couldn’t murder him with her purse. It was the lesser of two evils.

“I thought I’d wing it,” he tossed over his shoulder as Happy opened the door, then he smiled and threw his legs out of the car before she could kill him with her glare alone.

He ran almost directly into Rhodey. Tony blinked, wrong-footed, then grinned and threw his arms around his friend, careless of the cameras pointed their way.

“Platypus!”

“Tones.”

Rhodey hugged him back, because they were manly like that, then pushed him away so they could walk into the building together. Tony looked over to see Rhodey’s Swellow, Tina, catching up with Stoutland as the two Pokémon followed the humans into the event. He grinned.

“So, what are you and Tina doing here?”

Rhodey looked at him with one eyebrow raised. Tony swore mentally.

“Oh no. Did they rope you into this? I’m so sorry.”

“Nobody roped me into anything,” Rhodey denied. Tony didn’t believe him. “But they told me if I presented you with an award, you’d be deeply honoured.”

Tony wasn’t sure if Rhodey was guilt-tripping him, or if he was genuinely hurt by Tony’s attitude toward the award, but he hadn’t seen his friend for far too long, and that pouty look had always been enough to make him feel bad. He backtracked.

“Of course I’d be deeply honoured. And it’s you, that’s great!”

It kind of was. This whole thing may be an event that he had tried to get out of by claiming that he was washing his hair (that had made Pepper quirk a smile before shoving his tux into his chest), but with Pepper at his side and Rhodey doing the presenting, it was tolerable.

Obie strode up to Tony as they got into the function room and slapped him on the shoulder.

“About time, Tony! I was getting worried you weren’t going to show!”

“You can blame Pepper for that,” Tony muttered, angling his head so that Tina could perch on his shoulder. He reached up to stroke her beak, and she chirruped at him. Rhodey ran a hand over Stoutland’s back. Obie turned his back on them to greet Pepper.

“I’m so sorry,” Tony whispered to Rhodey and Tina both. They were putting up with this media circus for him, and Obie repaid them by pretending they weren’t there. Tony didn’t apologise often, especially on behalf of other people, but this needed one. Tina nipped his fingers lightly and Rhodey sighed.

“Yeah, it’s ok.”

***

_Tony Stark._

Tony groaned. Any presentation that began with his name said in that tone was only going to go bad places. Pepper slapped his leg in reprimand; apparently his complaint had been audible.

_Visionary. Genius. American patriot._

Well, that was kind of true. At least they hadn’t introduced him using his…

_Even from an early age, the son of legendary weapons developer Howard Stark quickly stole the spotlight…_

… father. Of course. Never mind the semi-charitable things he’d been thinking; this was going to suck.

He blanked out the rest of the bio (probably inaccurate, most of them were) so that he wouldn’t start snorting and get whacked by Pepper again. Stoutland rested his head on Tony’s leg; the dog knew just how much Tony hated this. He didn’t want this award. He didn’t deserve it.

_Today, Tony Stark has changed the face of the weapons industry by ensuring freedom and protecting America and her interests around the globe._

Well, put like that, he supposed he did. Ensuring freedom… He liked that way of looking at it. Freedom was what he was going for. Never mind the fact that his weapons had killed hundreds, probably thousands of people. Never mind that the Jericho had the capacity to do that all over again _on its own_. He hadn’t known the destructive force behind it truly until he’d run several simulations, and it was way overpowered. This thing could take out a mountain or two if pointed at the right spot. He’d tried to stop manufacture, but the Board had already bought and sold the idea, and the best Tony could do was damp it down. It was less weapon-of-mass-destruction now than it had been, but it was still more powerful than Tony was happy with. Aim that at an insurgent base a little too close to the civilians, and there would be big trouble.

Tomorrow, he was supposed to be showing the new weapon off in Afghanistan, trying to sell it to the Army. He didn’t want to go.

Stoutland growled quietly, snapping Tony’s attention back to the present and up to the stage, where Rhodey was talking.

“…my friend, and he is my great mentor. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honour to present this year’s Apogee Award to Mr Tony Stark.”

There was applause, and then he was lit up. He blinked, eyes watering in the spotlight, then sighed and forced his media smirk onto his face. Pepper nodded at him, Obie clapped him on the back, and Stoutland licked his wrist in a show of moral support. Tony tangled his fingers in the dog’s fur, then stood and made his way to the stage. Stoutland went to follow, but a look from his human bade him to sit back down. Tony may need to be associated with the weaponry and the blood, but his Pokémon did not.

He hugged Rhodey again when he got onto the stage, because why the hell not, then took the award from him and leaned against the microphone stand.

“Did you call me your mentor? Really? He’s older than me,” Tony said, facing the audience but pointing at Rhodey. There was laughter, and Rhodey shook his head with a smile. Tony smiled back and decided to stick to the script Pepper had read to him earlier. He twirled the award in his hands.

“Wow, would you look at that? That’s something else. I don’t have any of those floating around.”

Ok, so he embellished a little.

***

Pepper didn’t strangle him for his speech, which Tony took as a ‘well done’ and rewarded himself with a drink. Stoutland gave him a Look (why was he getting so many of those tonight, he was behaving), so Tony offered him his own glass. The dog was not amused, and wandered off to schmooze with the Pokémon that had accompanied various important humans to the ceremony. Tony shrugged and looked around for people he actually wanted to talk to.

Obie was over in the corner talking to three journalists – Tony was giving him a wide berth. Rhodey had been accosted by two women – lucky bugger – but Tina was giving them annoyed looks, so Tony didn’t anticipate it going anywhere. He’d give them a few minutes though. That left Pepper, who was around… somewhere… Where was she? Finally, he spotted her vivid hair and green dress over by the table they’d been sat at earlier. He weaved his way over, dodging the various people who looked like they wanted to talk to him, and snagged her wrap from the back of her chair as she reached for it. She turned, surprised, then scowled and crossed her arms.

“I need that back, Tony.”

“Where are you going?”

“Home. To bed. I am a normal person; I need sleep, unlike some people. And I have to get up in the morning.”

“Can I leave too?”

Pepper made a clucking sound with her tongue and patted his cheek.

“The guest of honour needs to stay around for at least an hour, Tony. Go, mingle. Try not to offend anybody. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She walked around Tony, leaving him pouting at the table. He called after her, making sure his voice didn’t carry to anybody who might take it seriously.

“You’re fired!”

“No, I’m not,” she called back, waving, the wrap somehow in her hands and not Tony’s. He scowled and went to interrupt Rhodey’s doomed attempt at flirting.

“Honeybear! There you are. That was a touching speech, really. I never knew you loved me so much,” Tony cried as he approached, throwing an arm around Rhodey’s waist. He’d have gone for the shoulders, but Tina was still up there, glaring at the women. Rhodey sighed at him.

“I’ll take it all back right now if you don’t move that arm.”

“I’m wounded, Platypus. I thought we had something special.”

Rhodey snorted. The women looked at each other, then at the contact between the men, and backed away. Tony grinned.

“So do they by the looks of it.”

Rhodey shook his head. “I’m straight, Tony.”

“Spoilsport. Want to go play in the casino?”

The look Rhodey shot him was not an impressed one. “I thought Pepper cut you off?”

“Mum went home. Let’s throw a party while she’s away.”

“You’re mixing metaphors there, Tones. And no, by the way. I know what you’re like, and I don’t blow on another man’s dice.”

“Yeah, you said already,” Tony grumbled, letting go of Rhodey’s waist and tickling Tina’s tail feathers. “Well, what shall we do then? ‘Cus, this party sucks.”

“I don’t know about you, Mr Apogee Award, but I’m headed for bed. We have a flight to catch tomorrow, remember?”

Tony remembered. He’d kind of hoped Rhodey hadn’t, not that it had ever been likely.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“I’m serious, Tony; don’t be late!”

“You can count on it,” Tony reassured, purposely ambiguous, and waved as the human and bird left the room. He sighed. His friends had ditched the function, but expected him to stay. Well, screw that. He may not plan on sleeping before the flight tomorrow, but he sure as hell wasn’t spending his time here. He pulled his cell from his pocket, texted Happy to bring the car around, and went to find Stoutland.

***

Happy refused to let Tony leave the building without an escort, so Tony and Stoutland had to wait for the man and Lookout to come fetch them. Tony spun the Apogee Award in his hands, watching the light reflect off the glass. Stoutland huffed at him, irritated by the movement.

“Fine,” he said, stopping the movement. He looked around the lobby, feeling a little like a four year old waiting to be picked up from a party by his parents. There was an employee over by the entrance, dressed up in a toga to promote the casino. Tony’s gaze flicked from the award in his hands to the employee, and he grinned.

Happy chose that moment to enter the foyer, Lookout riding on his shoulders, ears twitching. Tony and Stoutland started out towards them, Tony detouring slightly to walk past the employee.

“Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. There you go.”

He shoved the award into the startled man’s hands – let him tell that tale to his children – and continued out to the car. Stoutland sighed at him, but didn’t react otherwise. Tony smirked. He was rid of the damn award, at least physically.

Lookout chirped and spat a seed at him, which he ducked. The Pokémon beamed. Tony rolled his eyes and held back a few steps, allowing Happy to open the car door. He was about to climb in – freedom! – when a woman’s voice called out to him.

“Mr Stark! Excuse me, Mr Stark!”

Tony sighed. So close. It was probably a reporter; they were usually the only ones stubborn enough to follow him when he had been so obvious about avoiding them. Sure enough, her next words proved him right.

“Christine Everhart, _Vanity Fair_. Can I ask you a couple of questions?”

Tony kept his back to her, and contemplated the consequences of ignoring her, climbing into the car and asking Happy to run her over on his way out. Pepper would have his head.

“She’s cute,” Happy said in his ear. Tony looked up at him from behind his designer sunglasses.

“She’s alright?”

Happy nodded, and Lookout rolled his eyes. Stoutland huffed and jumped into the car. Tony turned around. She may be rude, but Happy was right, she was pretty. That tipped the to-talk-or-not-to-talk scales more in her favour than against, and he relented. He probably should give at least one comment after receiving an Apogee Award.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” she replied, not sounding as friendly as he’d have liked, and pulled a Dictaphone from her bag. “It’s ok?”

“Yeah, go on,” Tony nodded, already wondering if she should be regretting this. She flicked the device on, checked the red light, and held it in the air between them where it would pick up both their voices.

“You’ve been called the da Vinci of our time. What do you say to that?”

Great, she was one of _those_ reporters. Well, an unoriginal question deserved sarcasm.

“Absolutely ridiculous. I don’t paint.”

That didn’t get the smile he was expecting. She barrelled on with her next question.

“And what do you say to your other nickname? The Merchant of Death?”

That hit a little close to home, especially after the award he’d just been given. They were calling him that?

“That’s not bad,” he admitted, then realised he’d done so aloud and tried to divert her attention away from it. “Let me guess. Berkeley?”

“Brown actually.”

Didn’t she sound smug about the correction. Tony decided that he didn’t like her.

“Well, _Ms Brown_ , it’s an imperfect world, but it’s the only one we’ve got. I guarantee you, the day weapons are no longer needed to keep the peace, I’ll start making bricks and beams for baby hospitals.”

To go along with the funding he already provided for hospitals specialising in treating Pokémon. He wondered if she knew about that.

“Rehearse that much?”

Apparently not. Tony was starting to get annoyed by her attitude.

“Every night in the mirror before bedtime.”

“I can see that. All I want is a serious answer.”

Tony sighed and pulled his sunglasses from his face. He should just have gotten in the damn car when Stoutland did.

“Ok, here’s serious. Stark Industries has saved millions by advancing medical technology. We’ve kept people from starvation with our intelli-crops.” Both of which had actually been his idea. Pepper had made it happen, because she was an angel like that, but he had changed SI from the purely-weapons based company it had been under his father. But people like Ms Brown here didn’t care about that. He looped his answer back to her original point. “All those breakthroughs? Military funding, honey.”

She did not look as impressed as she should have done. Yeah, she didn’t care about the good things Tony had done; she was looking to write an anti-weapons article in the aftermath of the award.

Tony really hated reporters.

“Wow,” she said, and the word was patronising. “You ever lose an hour of sleep in your life?”

Ok, that was it, Tony had had enough. He resisted the urge to flip her off, feeling very mature, and pushed his glasses back onto his nose.

“It’s late, and I don’t appreciate being harassed by the media, especially when they’re going to write whatever the hell they want, no matter what I tell them. Goodnight, Ms Brown.”

He turned and got into the car, slamming the door behind him.

***

**February 2008, Clifftop House, Malibu**

Tony knelt on the floor in his workshop, working alone for once. The bots were at their charging stations, Stoutland and Ditto were asleep upstairs and Aron was lying underneath the car he was currently improving, watching him avidly, but not playing nurse to his surgeon for once. Which, given that he was elbow-deep in an engine that _refused to work as it should, damnit_ , was probably a good thing. There wasn’t much passing of tools to be done.

Tony looked from the engine to the holo-screen that rested next to Aron’s head.

“Give me an exploded view?” he asked Jarvis, who by now was connected to every compatible piece of tech in the house. The image on the screen separated into its various componants, one of which flashed.

“The compression in cylinder three appears to be low,” Jarvis warned. Tony nodded and turned back to the troublesome engine. He’d fixed this problem twice already; why did it insist on not working?

“Log that,” he muttered, mind divided between the engine and Aron’s warning growl and head twitch that somebody was entering the shop. He knew it was Pepper from the Pokémon’s body language; if it had been anybody else, she’d have gotten between Tony and the doorway faster than he could process. For a creature with a metal carapace, she could move awfully fast when she wanted to.

“Please don’t turn down my music,” he said, not bothering to turn around as the door opened and the rock echoing around the room quieted. If Stoutland had been down here, it would have been quiet anyway, but Aron shared Tony’s liking for eardrum-splitting volume. Reason number seventy-six why she was the best fucking lab assistant ever.

Pepper, of course ignored him, merely finishing a conversation with somebody who was not Tony and snapping her phone shut. “You are supposed to be halfway around the world right now.”

So, she’d been talking to Rhodey. Tony made a mental note to tease his friend later for getting Pepper to fight his battles for him. He removed his hands from the car’s innards and reached for a rag. He wasn’t going to get out of this conversation.

“Why are you trying to hustle me out of here?”

He knew, but he was hoping that his good behaviour last night coupled with a little guilt trip now would be enough to get him out of this. He did not want to get on that plane. Unfortunately, Pepper was immune to Tony’s unique brand of charm.

“Your flight was scheduled to leave an hour and a half ago.”

“That’s funny,” he drawled, wiping his hands and turning to face her. Aron crept out from under the car and leaned lightly against his calf. She didn’t want him to go either. “I thought, with it being my plane and all, that it would just wait for me to get there. Doesn’t it kind of defeat the purpose of having your own plane if it leaves before you arrive?”  
Aron cheeped in agreement. He scratched the top of her head. Pepper, again, ignored him, going so far as to talk over him. Damnit, how was he supposed to get out of this if she refused to listen to him?

“Tony, I need to speak to you about a couple of things before I get you out the door.”

Ok, so maybe she was paying more attention to him than he thought if she was capable of making digs at him.

“Larry called. He’s got another offer for the Jackson Pollock in the wings. Do you want it? Yes or no.”

Tony had no idea who Larry was, but he vaguely recalled Pepper talking about the Pollock person. An artist, if he was right. She had definitely mentioned seasons in relation to him. Art was way more her thing than his; Tony didn’t care about paintings. Still, he saw an opening to get off the why-are-you-not-on-a-plane topic, and he was not above taking it.

“Is it a good representation of his spring period?”

See Pepper, he listened. He mentally stuck his tongue out at her. She blinked at him.

“Um, no. The Springs was actually the neighbourhood in East Hampton where he lived and worked, not spring like the season.”

Oh. Well, close enough. He’d guessed the right season, at any rate, so he was awarding himself points and screw the incorrect context.

“So?”

She took a breath and went along with it. Tony loved her just a little bit right then.

“I think it’s a fair representation. I think it’s incredibly overpriced.”

She wanted it. Tony knew that look; he saw it in the mirror often enough. However, unlike him, Pepper didn’t have the habit of spending money like it was going out of fashion. He made a decision. It was her birthday today; why not treat her? Of course, if he told her that, she’d yell at him. She didn’t like when he brought her things, unless they were apology gifts, and then she emailed him pictures of shoes. When he did it under his own steam, he tended to go a little far, and she hated him ‘buying affection’, as she’d put it once. Tony hadn’t done anything so overt since.

“I need it,” he said, throwing the rag onto the engine and standing. Aron headbutted his leg, but he’d already seen it; Dakota, Pepper’s Ninetales, had accompanied her into the shop, and was sniffing around Dummy in a manner that Tony didn’t like. He started to walk over, talking as he went. “Buy it. Store it.”

Pepper would put it on display somewhere tasteful, he knew, but saying that would just point out that his motives were not what he claimed, and he didn’t want to get yelled at by Pepper for doing something nice.

Dakota backed off as Tony approached, though it probably had more to do with Aron speeding up behind him, glaring. To be fair, the Ninetales wasn’t that bad; Tony didn’t mind the fox wandering the shop unaccompanied so long as she didn’t touch anything, unlike Ruby, who was not allowed inside under any circumstances. It was just that Dummy had a phobia of fire-type Pokémon, ever since the psychotic dragon had singed all his paintwork on the left hand side the first time they ever met. How was the bot meant to know that the tail-flame wasn’t a fire hazard? If it was anybody’s fault, it was Tony’s for letting the bot have the fire extinguisher in the first place. Not that he’d pointed that out, because Ruby hated him enough as it was. He didn’t want to experience her flamethrower firsthand.

Pepper followed him, holding one hand out at waist-height. Dakota bumped the fingers with her nose and wrapped herself around Pepper’s legs.

“Ok,” Pepper said, reading once again from her clipboard. Tony patted Dummy’s strut as Aron chirped at the bot caringly. “The MIT commencement speech…”

“Is in June,” Tony pointed out, turning to face her again. “Please, don’t harangue me about stuff that’s way, way down…”

“Well, they’re haranguing me,” Pepper said, ticking something off on her clipboard, “so I’m going to say yes.” She pulled a sheet of paper from under the one she’d just written on and held it out to him. “I need you to sign this before you get on the plane.”

Tony took the paper – she all but thrust it at him, it was either that or get slapped with it – and signed it without looking. Her tone was more important than whatever it said, and he trusted her implicitly. If she wanted him to sign over his life to her, she’d have had him do it a long time ago.

“What are you trying to get rid of me for? What, you got plans?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

Tony frowned. He wasn’t aware that she had a life outside of work.

“I don’t like when you have plans.”

He really didn’t. Who was he going to call mid-flight when he got bored if Pepper was busy doing other things?

She smiled at him indulgently. Dakota settled for a glare.

“I’m allowed to have plans on my birthday.”

Right, the birthday. Tony sometimes forgot that, just because he liked to celebrate his by locking himself in his workshop for three days, most other people went out to celebrate.  
Also, he should probably be playing dumb right about now, because birthday equalled painting equalled shouting.

“It’s your birthday?”

“Yes,” she replied, her smile not shifting. She wasn’t buying it. Tony upped the ante.

“I knew that,” he said quickly, defensively. “Already?”

“Yeah, isn’t that strange? It’s the same day as last year.”

Tony breathed a sigh of relief at the sarcasm. She believed him. He shot her a smirk.

“Well, get yourself something nice from me.”

“Oh, I already did.”

Tony blinked. She did? That was new.

“And?”

“It was very nice.”

Tony was starting to wonder just what it was he’d signed.

“Yeah?”

She nodded.

“Very tasteful. _Thank you_ , Mr Stark.”

Oh. She was referencing the painting. She knew. And she was ok with it? Well, she had brought it up to him… Tony blinked and smiled. She had let him buy her stuff without shouting at him. He liked this Pepper.

“You’re welcome, Ms Potts.”

He took the espresso she handed him and downed it. Aron headbutted his calves, so he ducked to stroke her head then stood again, wincing when his knees cracked. Pepper was looking at him with her head tilted to one side. He sighed, knowing when he was beat.

“Okay.”

He waved to Aron, told Jarvis to shut everything down, and left to get on the damn plane.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note to those who are interested: I HAVE seen IM3, but this fic (and the ones following it) have been plotted out well in advance of the film coming out, so it will not come into the plotline at all in this verse. Neither will Thor 2, CA2 or Avengers 2 when they are released, though I will be seeing them all. This verse was developed from the First Stage of the MCU, and anything after the first Avengers film will not come into it.
> 
> Thank you all so much for the names last chapter! I have now chosen the names, which will be revealed in upcoming chapters, but in the meantime, I have three more Pokemon for you;  
> Golurk (these things do not have defined genders, so go nuts)  
> Female Chatot  
> Male Galvantula
> 
> The people who gave the names that I am going with from last chapter are KittyChan, Boxesofboxes and Captainmischief. Special thanks also to mizukihikari, whose amazing names are not being used for the three advertised, but who has given me permission to use them for other Pokemon instead. Thanks to everyone who gave suggestions, they were all amazing and the decision was really hard. I hope you can all be equally amazing this time!
> 
> See you in a few weeks.


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